Slashdot Mirror
Google buys Pyra Labs
Argyle writes "SiliconValley.com reports that Google has bought Pyra Labs. Pyra Labs is the creator of the Blogger software and runs the blogger.com and blogspot.com services. In weblog fashion, founder Evan Williams reported the news on his weblog in the middle of the Live from the Blogosphere event."
This has the potential to be huge... Google Blogs..
Not only could you search the Internet, but you could refine your searches just to other people's thoughts, etc.
Mark another one up for Google being one of the best tech companies in the business world.
On slashdot.org, there will roughly 100 posts per day claiming that Google is "the evil empire." It's a rule. Commercial success and non-Open-Source-itude (I'm allowed to make up words here.) are considered evil on the /. boards. So before you guys go all crazy about how Google's assimilating every company are being evil and all (and undoubtedly citing the Scientology debacle, no less), just remember this: ultimately, the quality of the product matters.
So as if my searches weren't already becoming diluted with Blog drivel they definitely will now!
Google has never done anything that hasn't redefined what went before it.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I think Google is the perfect Pyra buyer because their user-driven mentality is right in line with Evan's mentality. Google Labs is full of cool ideas that three-person Google teams come up with, and the ones that get a lot of user attention and use get funded further and get ramped up for mainstream use. It makes perfect sense to me that Google would be attracted to the best extra-googliar example of this mentality: Blogger, the first large-scale hosted blog application.
Curiosities I have are how Google will deal with it's first for-pay service, and what, if any, value-adds Google will give to Blogger blogs: Higher rankings in search results? Possibly. Live posting into Google's search index? Probably. I'm sure there are ideas that haven't even been thought of yet.
I can't wait to see where this goes! I just wish I was a part of it.
Kevin Fox
It is not a big news actually, as people wanted it to be. Searching and Blogging are different things. Webblogging will reach its limits soon, since not everyone is eager to put something out there. It is a personal choice, and blogging, although still with growth potential, will not become the next big thing. Google's decision is in some way a very good decision, since we need a tool to search blogs, separately, just like Google News. Google is right again on the issue. Blogging will be important.
Is it just me or does it seem that Google is trying to become the number 1 information portal?
It would be nice if the overall impact of this is
more even more people participating because of the
google tie-in. It would be very very nice if it got
so big that all kinds of news that our mostly
corporate influenced media didn't report on got out
and about and all around. I hope this turns into
one very huge good thing.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Internet connection ......... $30.00
Getting a blog .............. $10.00
Highest Google rating ....... $250.00
The whole word seeing my daily rants about how my life sucks and how the world is out to get me ...................... Priceless
This isn't about Google pumping up Blogger, or BlogSpot. This is about them acquiring direct access to blog data.
--
Jordan
Bloogle? Gooblogs?
And all the trends they can presumedly spot and all the private emails they can nab as part of all the drivel...I mean data. Gotta be painful having to wade thru all that whining. This isn't fb. My point is to agree with the parent that the back end is the driver.
Anyone thinking this is so google can be a better neighbor isn't paying attention.
Your blogs belong to google. Hand 'em over.
I already use livejournal, but I could see blogging at google considering 80% of the time I am going to google.com and then looking up other stuff.
If you are going to be at google to look up other site, pictures, catalogs, etc. might as well get your daily blogging needs taken care of as well.
Slashdot? In ten years? Won't Microsoft have bought VA software by then?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
i wanted to post anonymously but what the heck.
a related thing came up recently in our research group chitchat that google is actually sucking up quite a few of the top notch CS folks - rob pike anyone?:)
and it so happens that a couple of weeks back a bunch of lets say "highly talented" folks left the company i work for to google....:)
this acquisition seems to revalidate that they sure seem to be quite active and healthy and i am darn proud because the founders are our alumni......
They bought Deja News, or whatever it was called, giving them direct access to the wisdom of the masses, as encoded in newsgroups. Except that newsgroups seem to be a fading concept, supplanted by mailing lists and blogs. Well, Google can't very well buy mailing lists (from whom would you buy them?) but they just bought most of the blogs. Note that they haven't bought or apparently even tried to buy any traditional mass-media company (CNN, NY Times, Knight-Ridder, etc). In the business world, nobody has placed much value so far on the collected, shared knowledge of the masses, so Google can buy Deja and Pyra for cheap.
The big question is what owning the major information conduits of the masses gets Google. Google didn't just buy Atrios or Dave Barry, they bought the medium everyone is using to blog.
This kind of gets me back to an idea I blogged about a little while back--that you could probably make a business out of aggregating blogs into an ersatz net magazine and selling advertising space on the result. Google presents the advertisers with the combined traffic of the top 20 blogs, shows them a prototype of a salon-style magazine and asks how much they'd pay for ad space, then goes to those top 20 blogs and asks them whether they'd agree to publish regularly in exchange for some (smallish) cut of the ad revenue.
Makes me wonder how long we have until Google buys LiveJournal...
adeu,
Mateu
"And we're happy here, but we live in fear, we've seen a lot of temples crumble..." - Concrete Blonde
I think at this point in time, if anyone could start an IPO gold rush in the internet world, it's google.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I have actually been thinking lately of this very idea (Google + Blogging ++) and am very impressed that Google is taking this step.
...
Amongst other things, I imagine users of Google being able to "gab" through Google blogs about anything on the Internet and have Google keep track of all of the references. Brilliant!
Search for: Cowboy Neal
Result 1: How does cowboy neal scrub his shoes..
Blogs associated with this topic: bla bla
Result 2: bla bla...
Could be very interesting...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
a. Google News
Dan Gillmor, who broke this story, mentioned in an update the possibility, that the weblog links can be used to improve Google News.
But Google doesn't need to buy Pyra for that. Google can spider any leading weblog they want. Yes, there was this problem of interlinked weblogs resulting in a high PR (PageRank) for certain logs, but Google fixed that problem by giving more value to outgoing links then incoming links. They don't need to buy Blogger for indexing of weblogs.
b. Portal
Another suggestion that has been made: Google is moving to a portal.
I refuse to believe that Google is getting megalomanic. Besides, we all know what happened to AltaVista.
c. Direct access
Jshare suggested Google bought Blogger to get direct access to blog data.
But crawling the 200.000 active Blogs doesn't cost much resources. It's only a few gig of data. Why bother to buy a whole firm for that?
d. Journal with ads
Mateub suggests that Google could make a magazine out of the blogs, complete with ads.
But they can do that already. Have a close look at news.google.com. Search for, hmm, Google At the right side, there's enough space for ads. Google could index just the weblogs, like Daypop, and make a new product out of it (without buying Pyra).
Whatever the reason is behind the buy, it will have a huge impact. The simple fact that one of the hottest internet companies buys Pyra's Blogger will make the product main stream in months.
Henk van Ess editor of Voelspriet
TIP: Check Ovidiu Predescu site now and then. He started working at Google's on January 22 and writes about it in his ...weblog.
So why do it in the first place? The whole point of publishing something online is in the hope that someone out there will read it (for whatever reason). If it truely was "just for yourself" you would be writing it in a pen-and-paper journal, or in a personal document you never uploaded. Of course blog-writers want people to read their stuff. Unfortunately most of it is garbage.
There is no irony in the grand-parent's comment because it's a comment in a community. When blogs became popular people started calling Slashdot a "web log", but really it's always been a discussion forum, just like usenet but on the web. Blogs on the other hand are about a single person making some commentary about this subject or that. It's about the ego of the poster, whereas Slashdot and similar discussion sites are about the combined thoughts of all of the posters.
I got a sig so you would remember me.
To a certain extent, nothing is written anywhere that is not wanted by the author to be read. Even if that want is very small at the back of the author's mind.
Most diaries are not written not by the author to the author, but by the author to some variable entity. Sometimes that entity is a lost parent. Sometimes it's a soulmate they've yet to meet. Sometimes it's just an invisible friend named "diary."
A weblog does about the same thing with little additional effort. Author sits, opens blogging interface, writes. The only major difference is the type of physical motion involved. The difference between a diary writer and a columnist is the same as that between a personal blogger and a more ambitious one. A personal blogger writes about all the little shit and joys of his daily life, and at most invites his close friends and family in to share himself. An ambitious blogger will cover those little shits and joys only so far as they tie into some kind of bigger issue they think people will find important.
That, however, is painting both types of bloggers in a very dim light. Truly, the blog is the greatest democratizer created to date. Anyone can pick up their own personal megaphone, and shout out to the masses, in a town square without physical limits. They don't even have to have anything to say. Plus, you aren't forced to listen if you don't want to. You just go to one of the large parts of the square that the megaphone doesn't reach. Democratic all around.
The post that spurred all this discussion could be called flamebait... but ironic is more fun. "Free clue: No one gives a damn about you, or your thoughts." It being a comment in a community or out of one doesn't matter- either way it's still an expression of his thoughts. Ironic indeed.
Thought provoking, however, sounds like a better mod point to use.
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Ah ha! Finally, a solution for the Google Time Bomb! Google would be able to filter out 85% of the blogs and show us the real (read: unblogged) results.
$DEITY bless $NATION
You're assuming google is buying blogger to improve google's services.
But it's likely google wants to improve blogger's services, and that may be the main game: if google's own resources can dramatically improve blogger, then a strong synergy exists after all.
What do people blog about? Recent events.
What is the world's best source of info on recent events? Google.
Google can integrate its data into the blogger UI to structure blogs, possibly link between them, etc. This in turn will improve google's own services. As you say, that part could be done by spiders. BUT by no means as effectively as a situation where the blog data itself is directly linked to google's records before it is is even published to the web.
Elwyn Jenkins, who is behind Google Village or Googlology Info Site wrote a comment about this story minutes after we both discovered Dan Gillmor's article. His comments are available at Google Buys Pyra: Fuel for The Blogging World!. Here are my comments about his story. "I agree with you, it's all about content. But there's a business aspect too. Larry and Sergey might run the technical show. But Eric Schmidt is here to take care of the business. And how Google will make money? By hosting bloggers for a fee? There were not so many paying customers for BlogSpot. And even imagine one million subscribers for $40 a year. That would not bring a great stream of revenue to Google. They must have an hidden idea."
Google News at the present time is dependant on about 4,000 news sites of which Google has no control. There is a lot of newsworthy stuff in blogs, particularly if Google can attract key businesses, organizations and others.
This brings about a new type of content organization -- Google's Alternative News -- not dependant on the other news organizations.
Now couple these ideas with what jefu is saying, Google has some real muscle in the world of information. Coupled with search engine, news breaking on blogs, Google could have a million or so sources that can be automatically indexed, so people can search fresh seconds after the news has broken.
Sites like mine Google Village as a Bloogle could be indexed and on the main news page in seconds. Now I think there is the business model for Google. If each person pays for their News Site to have access to the Google-News-Machine . . . I know I would pay!