Bloglines Returns to Challenge Google Reader - Thank Goodness
Popular RSS reader Bloglines says it's solved the much publicized recent problems with feed updating that lead smaller services to pursue its users and Google Reader triumphalists to declare the RSS reader market all zipped up.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bloglines' comeback lands just days after coverage of its near-collapse: TechCrunch had declared the destruction of Bloglines complete, with the founder himself preparing to defect to Google Reader. The feed-updating failures that triggered that obituary — part of a broader stretch of RSS infrastructure flakiness that also saw FeedBurner dropping pings — had pushed smaller rivals to court Bloglines' stranded users while Google Reader looked set to own the category outright. Bloglines now claims those updating problems are solved, re-entering a market widely written off as decided.
First-order effects
- Bloglines users who were mid-migration to Google Reader or smaller services get a reason to stay put, and the smaller readers that had been courting them lose their easiest acquisition channel.
- Google Reader's de facto monopoly claim is contested again, forcing it to compete on reliability and features rather than simply absorbing refugees.
Second-order effects
- Reliability becomes the competitive axis in RSS reading: Bloglines' recovery pressures Google Reader to keep investing in freshness and uptime (as later debates over its firehose behavior would show), and keeps exit options alive for publishers who syndicate feeds.
- A viable second player sustains the ecosystem of smaller reader startups, since a market with only one dominant incumbent leaves no refuge when that incumbent stumbles.
Third-order effects
- The episode foreshadows the structural fragility of single-vendor dependence on free infrastructure: when Google eventually shutters Reader, hundreds of thousands of users scrambled to alternatives like Feedly within days — exactly the lock-in risk Bloglines' brief revival was arguing against.
- It points toward a lasting pattern in web services: categories declared 'zipped up' around one platform gatekeeper remain contestable as long as users retain portable data formats like RSS, but independent challengers rarely survive long against free incumbents.
The trend: This is an early data point in the recurring cycle where a dominant free platform consolidates a content-distribution category, independents briefly contest it, and users ultimately pay the price of single-provider dependence when the incumbent exits.