I’m speaking of the Google Reader, which I’ve been fiddling with all morning after giving up on Bloglines for the last time.

I had been using a Firefox plugin called Sage for all my RSS feeds, but it quit working yesterday – just started hanging up while checking certain feeds and leaving the rest unchecked. This created the unthinkable option of clicking through my bookmarks in search of fresh blog fodder (when you’ve subscribed to more than a hundred feeds, this is actually a major headache. The sane option — not blogging — was out of the question. The blog monkey gets cranky without his breakfast.)

My hundred-plus feeds were beginning to look like Fred Sanford’s back yard anyway, so it was high time for some housecleaning. I tried using Bloglines, but I couldn’t get its click-and-drag organizer to drag more than one screen at a time, which made it worthless for rearranging my obscenely long and messy feed list.

Then I stumbled across a blog entry recommending Google’s RSS reader, and figured out within a few minutes that it blows Bloglines out of the water. Frankly, it removes the need for any kind of RSS reader based on your PC. It’s easy to organize a huge list of feeds, which can be imported from other readers, and being Web-based, ensures you can get your feeds anytime you’re online.

In a way I’m sad to see Bloglines so thoroughly overshadowed. It was was my favorite Web-based news reader a couple years back. Now Google with its billions and its brainiacs can just come along and take over any segment of the Web it takes a liking to.

Bad news for Bloglines, but good news for the blog monkey.