Ask Jeeves Acquisition of Bloglines Confirmed

Posted on February 8, 2005

Bloglines has confirmed tha acquisition rumor that spread around the Blogosphere over the weekend. An acquisition FAQ has been posted on the Bloglines.com website indicating the completed deal. And on his website Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines, promises that the Blogines service will continue and that Teoma a search engine company owned by Ask Jeeves, and Bloglines will launch a world-class blog search tool. That sounds good to us.

Fletcher writes, "For example, we'll be integrating Ask's killer Teoma search engine technology within Bloglines. This will vastly improve our blog search capabilities. We don't think that world-class blog search exists yet; with Teoma and Bloglines that will happen."

Jim Lanzone, Ask Jeeves' senior vice president of search properties, says in a statement, "Bloglines is not only a market leader in feed aggregation and blog search, but it is truly one of the most useful and addictive services on the entire Web. We are excited about providing Bloglines with the resources to grow its service and help it reach a broader audience. Bloglines is a natural fit for our multi-brand portfolio, as we extend our information retrieval services to encompass the rapidly growing amount of dynamic content and information available in the blogosphere."

The acquisition price was not disclosed. Fletcher will be joining Ask Jeeves as ice president and general manager of Bloglines.