Ask Jeeves(r), Inc., a leading provider of information retrieval technologies, brands and Internet advertising services, today announced it has acquired Trustic, Inc., the company that owns and operates Bloglines. Bloglines is the world's most popular free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing RSS feeds, blogs and rich web content. Bloglines will continue to operate as an independent brand in the Ask Jeeves portfolio and retain its name and unique URL

"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," said Jim Lanzone, Ask Jeeves' senior vice president of search properties. "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."

Founded in 2003, Bloglines is a pioneer in bringing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and rich content to mainstream Internet users. Recognized as the leader in its category in terms of traffic, feature richness and ease of use, Bloglines indexes more than 280 million live web content elements-news feed and blog articles, images, audio and video-and is available in English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Bloglines has been touted for excellence around the world with many awards and accolades, including Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites for 2004.

"Bloglines became so popular because it was one of the first Web services to make blog and RSS feed reading free and easy to understand for average Internet users. We want to continue this quest to bring our exciting capabilities into the mainstream," said Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines. "By joining forces with Ask Jeeves, we will be able to accelerate our growth with access to the millions of unique visitors to Ask Jeeves' properties. And we are eager to take advantage of Ask Jeeves' support, extensive resources, operational scale and innovative technologies to expand and improve the services we deliver to users." Fletcher will join Ask Jeeves as vice president and general manager of Bloglines.

The acquisition brings together complementary technology assets, including Bloglines' leading RSS aggregation capabilities and Ask Jeeves' world-class Teoma algorithmic search technology. Ask Jeeves plans to leverage these technologies across its search and portal brands, and as of today, Bloglines' Web search capability will be powered by Ask Jeeves' search technology.

"The Ask Jeeves search advantage is based on world-class technical innovation and a user-centric approach," continued Lanzone. "It is exciting to have the opportunity to connect Bloglines' live information flow and blog search capabilities with our unique indexing technology to provide consumers with one of the most comprehensive and personal web experiences across all sources -- from the desktop to the Internet and, now, into the blogosphere."

Financial terms were not disclosed.