Back in October, I wrote that Bloglines Still Beats Google Reader Today. It's time to update that statement. I've now made the switch to Google Reader.

Google Reader has gotten better in terms of speed and interface. Some of my nags about it back in October remain, such as the pain caused by universal Google accounts. However, the main reason for switching has more to do with a problem that developed over time for me with Bloglines.

When reading news in Bloglines, I generally would read category by category, or blog by blog, depending on the length of posts and time I had available to dedicate to reading a thread. If I only had a few minutes, I would select a blog or category that generally leaned toward shorter posts, such as a few political headlines, photos from my friend's Flickr feeds, or other scannable content.

Over time, I found that I was consistently visiting the quick hits feeds at the expense of content doled out in longer articles. Making matters worse, as content built up in the longer format feeds, the time I needed to catch up kept increasing, leading to further procrastination.

Dealing with this situation is where Bloglines failed me. Say I have 12 awesome essays from a great writer in queue, but I don't have time or the mental capacity to read or digest all twelve in one shot. As soon as I click the link for that blog within Bloglines, all twelve as displayed and marked as read. If I navigate away from the page, they're gone. The only options provided by Bloglines are to keep all the posts in a read state (even if I've read 2-3) or check boxes next to the each of the articles I didn't have time to read. Neither solution is appropriate.

In Google Reader, the first of the twelve stories is marked as read once you start scrolling through the content but the other eleven remain in your unread queue. Problem solved.

Clicking the "All Items" button to view all new content from subscriptions sorted by date is still strange to me since Google does a poor job differentiating between sources. However, it does allow for faster news reading and keeps important, but longer, content from piling up.

Watching YouTube and listening to MP3 files from within the reader is an interesting experience. Generally, I don't think I'll use this because I can't continue on with my feed reading until I'm done with the media file if I don't open it in a separate tab or window.

I would like to see more power in the mobile version. Showing only one story at a time feels limiting and leads to way too much time sending requests and downloading when I could be reading. Give me the option to download five or ten stories at a time. My phone can handle it.

For those of you who haven't switched RSS readers in the past, it's a very simple process. Just export your current reading list, and import it to the new reader. In Bloglines, this is done near the bottom of the left column. In Google Reader, looking for import/export under Settings.