the corner office

Via Russell Beattie, Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines.

First, it'll be changed logos and branding. Then Ask Jeeves crap will start working its way into the functionality and UI. Anyone want to bet on how long it takes before you're wading through banner ads to get to your feeds? Then a "Bloglines Pro" for a low low subscription price, while the free version becomes more crippled, neglected and sucky.

Before long, you've exported your OPML (if you can still get to it), and you're back to a private bandwidth-guzzling RSS reader.

I'm being rather negative, and if I'm wrong I'll be a happy camper. But I don't think my pessimism is misplaced. Bloglines' running costs must be horrendous. It has no ostensible revenue stream right now, so it seemed rather obvious from the outset that the end goal must have been to build a loyal user base and collect enough blog content and useful technology to make it salable to some corporate types who'd be wanting to wring some sort of business model out of it. Perfectly understandable, and respect to the Bloglines folk for doing it. I'm just disappointed that reality had to set in.