The Ask Jeeves blog has the official announcement that they have bought Bloglines after the rumors started this weekend. According to Ask Jeeves:
There will be no short-term changes to Bloglines that weren't already on their roadmap. Over the long-term, Mark will now, as general manager of Bloglines for AJ, Inc., be responsible for that roadmap in the future.
I threw out my old RSS reader and imported all my feeds to Bloglines before going on Christmas vacation. Never looked back again. It is just great to be able to read my feeds any time, any place using Skweezer when I'm on the road. Better search in Bloglines would be cool, but what worries me is this section:
We will take our time determining the optimal business model for the service. We will continue to put the user experience first. As part of a bigger company there will be more options for Bloglines - from indirect monetization (through increased usage of our other brands) to direct if there is a model that makes sense for everyone.
Will Bloglines continue to stay free or will they limit the number of feeds to a ridiculously low number unless you subscribe to a premium service? I will continue to use Bloglines for now but I'm ready to roll my own system if things go down the drain.
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