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Google Reader has changed the way it displays folders and All Items.  If you’ve read everything in a folder, it still shows you items you’ve already read; the read counts decrease, but the folders never empty.  When you add a new feed to a folder, Reader shows X unread items, but lets you keep reading older and older items as long as you keep scrolling down. Older items automagically add themselves to the bottom of the article pane as you scroll down.

Dave Winer calls approaches like this a “River of News.”  One of the thinks I’ve liked about Reader is that it doesn’t feel as naggy as Bloglines.  The difference between the two is subtle, but important:

• In Bloglines, you have the folder display at the left, with unread counts on all your folders with unread items.  You click on a folder with unread items, all of the unread items appear in the frame at the right, and the unread count goes to zero.  If you close the browser at this point, you never see the items that Bloglines thinks you just “read”.  If you want to read something from a folder, you have to read all of the items, or you lose them.
• In Google Reader, you click on the folder at the left and the items appear on the right, but the unread count (and the unread statuses on the individual posts) remain unchanged.  You can read just one item and come back later to read more.  No pressure to read the whole folder at a gulp!  This is actually a pretty big difference under the hood – Google Reader tracks whether you read each post, and Bloglines tracks whether you read each folder.