Update: Jeeves buys Bloglines

Internet search company Ask Jeeves has finalised the acquisition of Trustic, which owns and operates web log giant Bloglines.

Rumours were rife yesterday that the deal was all but done and this morning Ask Jeeves confirmed the acquisition.

Bloglines will continue to operate independently from its new parent via its bloglines.com domain name.

Jim Lanzone, senior VP of search properties at Ask Jeeves, said Bloglines fits perfectly within the company's move into further search fields.

"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," he said.

Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines, said in a statement: "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."

"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," he added.

Founded in 2003, Bloglines indexes more than 280 million live web content elements including audio feeds, blogs, images and news feeds.

Bloglines featured in Time magazine’s 50 coolest websites for 2004.