Bloglines being killed off: Score another win for Google

RSS reader goes by the wayside, Google Reader gets a boost

I use plenty of Google products, from their search engine to Docs and Gmail, but for whatever reason I had remained loyal to IAC/Ask.com's Bloglines RSS reader, which I've been using for years to aggregate blog feeds.

But that all ended today when I heard Ask.com was pulling the plug on Bloglines so it could focus on its Q&A search service announced in July.

Bloglines, one of the earlier popular RSS readers, is going dark on Oct. 1. It did unexpectedly go dark every so often in recent years, but I can't say it was too bad.

The free news aggregator, which was launched in 2003 and acquired 5 years ago by Ask.com parent company IAC, did fail to keep pace with competitors, including social networks and other aggregators such as Google Reader.

"Not an easy decision, especially considering our loyal and supportive (not to mention patient) user base, but, ultimately, the right one given business reasons simply too hard to ignore," wrote Doug Leads, president of Ask.com, in a blog post. 

The Bloglines site itself announced its demise today as well, providing users with the steps they can take to transfer the blogs and sites they follow with the service to another service: "We want to make it as easy as possible to transport your feeds to another RSS aggregator". 

I've been using Bloglines for years, but upon hearing the news quickly transferred my feeds over to Google Reader. I'm happy to say it was painless, taking only a minute or two.

Meanwhile, looks like it's time to upgrade our 2010 IT industry graveyard slideshow

• Google
• Ask.com
• Bloglines
• Google Reader
• RSS reader