Google Reader didn’t get a particularly good start for the year, between the search being broken for a couple of days and the (accidental) removal from the Google navigation bar, which fueled speculation that the product could be abandoned or sidelined in favor of other projects. Despite the largely unjustified concerns, new features are being added all the time. Just today I noticed the shared items have a new ‘Options’ menu in the lower half next to the comments section. 
Right now, there is a single option available: ‘View this shared item in Google Buzz’. It’s a good step to integrate the two services better. Personally I only skim the top items in Buzz, since I prefer to read the full story in Reader, but some extra features of Buzz are missing; you can’t follow the conversation easily without leaving a comment, you can’t edit your own comment or get the URL of someone else’s. It’s not a perfect solution, but this new option addresses some of these annoyances. It would be nice to see the menu expand with some of the most requested features for Google Reader, like loading the full article from partial feeds or the comments from the original post.
P.S. While writing this article I tried to search in Reader and it’s broken again! It could be related to this code change – or maybe to other upcoming features – but let’s hope it will be fixed soon. Nobody wants to return to the ‘dark ages’ when Reader was basically the only Google product without search. 
Update: And here's the official announcement of the new features from the Google Reader blog: More control over comments on shared items.
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