Mary Hodder reports that web search company Ask Jeeves has purchased Bloglines for an undisclosed sum.
Ask Jeeves is integrating Bloglines into their search system, with the integration due to go live Monday. The announcement of the purchase is also expected to be made Monday.
The Ask Jeeves Blog already links through to the newly acquired service.
Its a bold step for the once great Ask Jeeves, who after nearly collapsing at the end of the dot.com boom has been trying to fight its way back to the top. Although it has had very little to do in blogging up to this time, the purchase of the blogoshperes most popular rss reader automatically deals itself in as a serious player in the sector and will undoubtedly result in an increase in traffic and revenue to the company.
Congratulations to all those involved, particularly the team at Bloglines.
(via Steve Rubel)