I’ve been using FeedLounge for several months now (ever since they came out of beta!) as my online feed reader. It has, without a doubt, the nicest UI (user interface, for my non-geek readers) of any feed reader, online or off, that I’ve ever come across. At the time I signed up, none of the other online feed readers were much good; Bloglines was the best of the bunch, but still not great. So I ponied up my $5/month and felt like it was an OK deal.

The convergence fo a few events have caused my thinking to change in the past week. First, I ran across the new and improved Google Reader. And boy, is it improved. There are still a few little things I wish it had (like choosing your sort order - I like to read from oldest to newest), but for the most part, it does everything I want a feed reader to do. Second, FeedLounge has been through a couple of frustrating hiccups this week, two separate issues causing multi-hour downtimes. Third, I’d like to save the $5/month. So, I dumped my OPML file from FeedLounge, imported it into Google Reader, and I’m good to go. I cancelled my FeedLounge subscription this morning.

Now I know Geof will have some comment to post here; he’s been using FeedLounge since the very beginning, maybe even before that; heck, he even had a version of it named in his honor! And I can’t fault him for sticking with it; it’s a great product. But market forces really do work; given the choice of a lower-priced, similar-and-acceptable functionality product, I’ll make the switch.