Ask Jeeves Buys Maker of Popular Bloglines Service
SAN FRANCISCO — Ask Jeeves Inc. plans to announce today that it has acquired the maker of Bloglines, a Web service that lets users keep up with online diaries and news sites.
The deal could help Oakland-based Ask Jeeves compete with larger Internet search companies -- such as Google Inc., which owns Blogger, a service that hosts so-called weblogs.
Bloglines was created by Trustic Inc., a start-up based in Redwood City, Calif., and has emerged as the most popular of the services known as RSS aggregators.
More and more Web publishers, from bloggers to major news organizations, are distributing their online postings through a technology called Really Simple Syndication. Bloglines lets users subscribe to RSS feeds and display them on a single Web page so they can keep up with websites that interest them without having to check each site for updates.
“This is the next way you’re going to see people searching for content and consuming content,” said Gary Stein, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research. “It’s exciting that one of the main search engines has made a move to bring this type of search into its fold.”
Bloglines doesn’t make money yet but will probably sell ads on its service, Trustic founder and Chief Executive Mark Fletcher said.
Ask Jeeves executives say they aren’t in a hurry for Bloglines to contribute revenue. The company says it plans to use the technology to include more content from blogs in its search engine. It will also incorporate Bloglines into other Ask Jeeves services such as Desktop Search, which helps people find files stored on their personal computers.
Moreover, the acquisition arms Ask Jeeves for the escalating search-engine wars. In addition to Google, Microsoft Corp. offers tools to create weblogs and Yahoo Inc. has championed RSS feeds through services such as My Yahoo.
“We think it’s great for our overall business,” said Jim Lanzone, senior vice president of search properties for Ask Jeeves. The question of how to make money directly from the service “is a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.”
