I’ve had a GR account for awhile and this is my first exposure to BL. I think in terms of their functionality they are very similar. A slight difference I noticed was that BL immediately offered the option of where to place the new feed, in an existing or new folder. Google requires that I arrange my feeds after the fact. BL also allows for after the fact reorganization.
Like MichelleW indicates there doesn’t seem to be a big difference, so it comes down to how the consumer interacts with the product. GR seems familiar, though as indicated in the homework review, it seems that I’m turning over all of my online life to Google. Probably intentional on Google’s part and I’m at least glad that Google is providing an excellent product and not taking the Microsoft approach, which seemed to be “we’ve got ‘em, so they’ll take what we give ‘em—doesn’t have to be great.”
I think my only minor beef is the name. “Bloglines” seems to imply that only blogs can be subscribed to, whereas “Google Reader” has a more wide open sounding name. I have to admit that how a product sounds affects my consumer choices. BL may not have been my first choice as I’m not a huge blog reader. I currently use GR mainly to maintain my entertainment sites, especially movie reviews. I must say though that as I’ve investigated BL I like it’s navigability and how easy it is to organize things.
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I agree with you. Since I am not familiar with RSS feeds and have never used either product that they both seem very similar to me. This could be because I have very limited interaction with a "reader" and don't see the small details.
Blogline did seem like an unusal name to me, too, since it did so much more!
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