Google announced today that Google Reader is about to get some changes, including a new design. It will also bring Google Reader closer together with Google+, the company says. Sounds about right.

“As a result of these changes, we also think it’s important to clean things up a bit,” says Google software engineer Alan Green. “Many of Reader’s social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week’s time we’ll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.”

“We think the end result is better than what’s available today, and you can sign up for Google+ right now to start prepping Reader-specific circles,” Green says. “We recognize, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you. That’s why we will also be extending Reader’s subscription export feature to include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all, and we want to make sure you can take it with you.”

That data includes: subscriptions, shared items, friends, likes and starred items.

We can also expect some changes to Gmail pretty soon from the looks of it. Google has uploaded a video with a closer look at the Gmail redesign announced back in the summer. More on that here.

Do you want to see Google make changes to Google Reader? Let us know in the comments.