I noticed a decent number of sites ditching RSS because it was too hard to monetize. RSS feeds were fairly low interaction. You read the article, you go to the next, you're done with them. This means you're not going to their site and getting the ad impressions, seeing the related links, noticing the comments, etc.

I personally think that an HTTP meta tag would be the right way to link to a G+ page. And heck, this is a browser extension, so I don't even have to install it if I don't want it. But it's not like this is a nefarious plot by Google to destroy the web as we know it.