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Google Helps Offer Blogger Pro For Free

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-things-for-nothing dept.

Khazunga writes "News.com is reporting that the Google-owned Pyra are releasing the formerly-$35/year Blogger Pro weblog service for free. This is backed up by an announcement from Evan Williams at the Blogger Pro site, as well as a list of the newly free Blogger features. It's the dot-com frenzy all over again! Free services with no business plan... run for your lives!"

3 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Former members by sinserve · · Score: 4, Informative

    RTFA. It says "Google said it would give Blogger Pro subscribers either a $24 Blogger sweatshirt or a prorated cash refund. That offer is good through Oct. 1."

  2. Pro now free because they're not hurting for cash by dw5000 · · Score: 4, Informative
    At least, that's what the e-mail I got from Evan Williams said. His explanation:
    Pro subscribers helped keep us going as a struggling start-up, when servers and bandwidth were at an extreme premium. We wanted to keep basic Blogger free, but we needed to start charging in order to keep the lights on. So we built new things that would appeal to some Blogger users....

    Today, as you may know, Blogger's situation is much different. For one thing, we're part of Google.... Google has lots of computers and bandwidth. And Google believes blogs are important and good for the web.
    So, apparently, they have the money to offer the feature set of Pro to everyone. Good for them. (I moved to MT a few months ago for a number of reasons.) Those of us who paid the $35 got a nice parting gift. :)
  3. Re:funny, except... by RobotWisdom · · Score: 4, Informative
    A web journal is not the same as a weblog.

    Weblogs are annotated logs of web-reading, and are therefore outward-directed, with lots of links. Web journals are just self-directed diaries that happen to be posted on the Web.

    The explicit original purpose of weblogs was to make the process of finding good reading on the Web more efficient. Unintentionally, the main current purpose is probably spreading news items that the mass media self-censor.

    Wallowing in narcissism has nothing to do with weblogs, although the mass media have been propagating that slur since the earliest days.