Slashdot Mirror
Google Helps Offer Blogger Pro For Free
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!"
If you take a tour on their site you will find out that they do make money - its not that obvious like on any other banner/pop exploded site, but they put small ads here and there, they offer PRO services for businesses where they sell servers and services... They make money without annoying the surfers and its very rare thing to find on the net.
Dont just mail it - Maileet
Google has quite a following but this sure as hell couldn't hurt their image. There are so many users that default to MSN search because that's all they know. Getting their name out there for more that just searches to the common users is going to help them establish even more dominance.
I think Google, being in the unique position of controlling what most people see on the web, sees anything that improves the web in general as improving their service. In particular, blogs are a great source of links to popular and useful sites for Google's PageRank algorithm to work with. That means more accurate and relevant Google results. As crazy as it sounds, this may just be a move by Google to try and make blogging more popular, because it has the side effect of improving their service. Also, blogging involves people in the web community, where they will inevitably come to rely on Google as we all do.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I know it might sound a bit strange to you, but:
;)
2. Increase the market share by flooding the market with free software.
This business model works when you can find a way to extend your other business in the new market share conquered. A typical example(but not very successful) is Netscape. Hotmail is always free and it's good to remain free for the sales of other products, e.g. Outlook.
Some business still execute this kind of plan even after the big boom. Those companies which failed with this business model during the boom is due to the fact that they don't have any concrete plan to make use of the advantage of high market share earned. (or the VC money arrive before they could make a plan
i don't understand how people will use some commercial website to put down personal information.
there's 2 good reasons why anyone would want to have a blog or diary:
1. one of the reasons i keep a journal or diary is because at some future point in my life i would like to look back and have memories brought back to me that i may have forgotten.
2. another reason is i am constantly moving around the world and i like to have a central place where my friends and family can keep updated on my activities.
using a commerical blog application satisfies requirement number 2, but what about number 1?
blogger won't be there forever, one day they will disappear. it may not be this year, or next or even in the next decade, but they will disappear or change in some way at some time.
when this happens, what about all your data? how is your data formateed? will they send you your data back to you in some comma delimited format? who knows?
that's not good enough for me. i wrote my own to satisfy my own requirements. if you don't want to write your own, there's plenty of free and open ones on sourceforge.net.
remember, when using a public service to keep your personal information, think about the future for that information.
Firstsly, personally I am not really into the "blogs". Despite my thinking that the whole term is retarded; the segregated and "showtime" nature of that particular slice of the net doesn't apeal to me much.
However sites like Livejournal rock. Sure there are tons of young girls and boys out there looking for an outlet for their typical teen angst and there are just as many people using as a hookup service (luckily friendster is taking over that function nicely).
The saving grace is for groups of friends. Thanks to my working in the Internet world as do many of my friends we have found ourselves scattered all over the place. By using livejournal as a replacement for the group emails we have now made easily searchable, archived places to communicate. This works out a lot better than lists ever did because people are more open on something they can call their own private place. Comments allow easy flow of conversation and links back. Also it removes the time constraints found on emails, usually if someone doesn't reply in a day or so no one else is even following that thread anymore. Finally the whole friends of friends thing has introduced me to a lot of great new people who I never would have met before.
Most of those who are so quick to pan are the typical elitists who can't find anything good in a thing unless it is something they personally use or participate in.
--- I do not moderate.