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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!"

75 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. business plan... by Pandora's+Vox · · Score: 3, Funny

    1. release formerly profitable software for free
    2. ???
    3. Profit!!!

    are they doing tose little google text ads or what?

    -Leigh

    1. Re:business plan... by ErixTr · · Score: 5, Funny

      No. The reality is;

      1. Profit
      2. ???
      3. Release formerly profitable software for free

      --
      less is more
    2. Re:business plan... by Channard · · Score: 2, Funny

      4. Other people choose free blogging rather than the pay service. 5. Go Bust 6. 'Would you like fries with that?'

    3. Re:business plan... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?" `":" #");}
    4. Re:business plan... by jsse · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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 ;)

    5. Re:business plan... by pyrros · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Blogs could be bad for the quality of google's results: because of blogs linking to eachother, the get a bigger pagerank than thy should, and therefore more influence on google than they deserve. I'm afraid that getting more of the unwashed massed to blog would be a bad thing. Ofcourse google could change the way pagerank works so that blogs have a reduced pagerank or something to that extend.

      Salon article about blogs and their influence on google

      Excerpt:
      You'd be hard-pressed to design a system that gave the blogging community a greater impact on Google's results. Because bloggers by definition link far more than your average Web page, and because they also tend to link to each other's sites (most blogs feature a now standard list of comrades in their margins), a page that attracts the attention of a few bloggers will quickly shoot up the Google rankings. Do a search on Larry Lessig's book "The Future of Ideas" -- a hit with the blogging community -- and a review from a blog called Sopsy Digest shows up 15 notches higher than an article from Business Week. (Or at least it did the last time I checked; Google rankings are hardly set in stone.)

    6. Re:business plan... by tiled_rainbows · · Score: 5, Interesting

      a review from a blog called Sopsy Digest shows up 15 notches higher than an article from Business Week.

      Maybe that's because the Sopsy's Digest review was better than the Business Week review.

      I've heard this argument before, but IMHO it just boils down to journalists whining that "amateurs" are scoring higher on Google than they are.

      But it is, in part, precisely this egalitarian, anyone-can-get-exposure nature of the Web that makes it so cool. If you don't like it, stick to the print media.

      --

      evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
    7. Re:business plan... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 4, Interesting
      The point is that when anybody can have a blog, there is no "everybody else" to worry about. Everyone can post whatever they want, and blogs act as a sort of collaborative filtering method to bring the good links to the top of Google searches (and other blogs), and therefore into the public awareness.

      This is totally different from the old way of content filtering, where we pay companies (with money or with eyeballs on ads) to sort our content for us and present only the good stuff. There may be a bias against non-bloggers (I don't see why there should be, since blogs can link to other deserving sites as easily as to each other), but since anybody can be a blogger with minimal effort it shouldn't be a problem. The only real problem is that this system has the potential to take over certain functions now performed by newspapers, magazines, radio stations, music companies, and other "content filterers"; some people don't like that.

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    8. Re:business plan... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 2, Insightful
      And what I'm saying is that journalists can blog too, instead of writing for a publication, if they are worried that they aren't getting heard because they're not a blogger. The only thing is that this may mean that "journalist" may start to disappear as a paid position like it is today. (perhaps they could sell targeted text ads to still make money?) But that's speculation, and far into the future. Certainly now bloggers do much better as essayists than news reporters. But that could change. Think Drudge report, or Kuro5hin or Slashdot even, if you have a sufficiently loose definition of blog. A large enough network of Slashdot-type sites, each with a community and each with a different focus, would have sufficient breadth to pull in a good number of interesting stories, while serving as a filtering mechanism at the same time. Then higher-level news blogs might emerge that cull the most interesting stories making the rounds in each sub-topic community. Or perhaps you could just bookmark a few sub-topic sites that interest you and just read those all the time.

      I'm not sure what you mean by "reducing" blogs to "merely" altering Google's results. Nobody is saying that blogs are reduced to anything. How is allowing blogs to determine Google rankings, which are arguably the most influential things on the Internet, reducing them in any way? I'd say its magnifying their power. It's not like their sole purpose will be to alter Google rankings. It's just a nice side effect that Google wants to make use of.

      If you want blogs that have fewer links and more discussion, I'm sure you'll always be able to find them. Even the small number of links on a link-light personal blog are likely to be very high quality though, worth their weight in gold to Google.

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    9. Re:business plan... by gekkotron · · Score: 2, Funny

      So this is only available in Soviet Russia?

    10. Re:business plan... by mmol_6453 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd have to point out a counterexample to Netscape: Internet Explorer.

      Comes bundled with every version of Windows, and you don't have to download it.

      --
      What's this Submit thingy do?
    11. Re:business plan... by j_d · · Score: 2, Interesting
      And what I'm saying is that journalists can blog too, instead of writing for a publication, if they are worried that they aren't getting heard because they're not a blogger. The only thing is that this may mean that "journalist" may start to disappear as a paid position like it is today.

      The disappearance of journalist as career is an interesting thought -- firstly, isn't there a certain level of legitimacy in being a paid reporter? There are certain skills required to be a good reporter, and these skills are not available or even evident to some. Secondly, reporters aren't all commentators; news should be presented free of coloring opinion as much as possible, right? While I don't discount the concept of blogging-as-news, I do believe that more blogging is editorial in nature.


      A large enough network of Slashdot-type sites, each with a community and each with a different focus, would have sufficient breadth to pull in a good number of interesting stories, while serving as a filtering mechanism at the same time.

      With sufficient tuning, I bet you could filter metadata from the bloggers, emotional content, and sort of, what, large group psycho-dynamics? Neat stuff.
    12. Re:business plan... by pyrros · · Score: 2, Insightful

      links in blogs point to what bloggers are talking about, are interested in, and thus searching the web one gets what people who use the web are interested in.

      The possible problem is: searching the web gets you what bloggers are interested in, and bloggers are not 100% representative of web users.

      The issue here, as I see it, is that because of crosslinking, a lame blog entry about subject X could get a higher pagerank than a good forum thread about the same thing. Now, this is more of a problem with pagerank than a problem of blogging, but my point that more people getting into blogging could worsen google's results' quality still stands.

      And just to be sure I'm clear on this: this is not the bloggers' problem, this is google's problem, and frankly link farming is a much worse "exploit" of this than the bloggers' artificially increased pagerank.

  2. Bloggers are smarter by OMG · · Score: 4, Funny

    From the free features list:

    Spellchecking: Fewer typos. Look smarter.

    I say: Spellchecking is for wimps. Be smarter. ;-P

    1. Re:Bloggers are smarter by daveo0331 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Even with spell checking, it will bee easy too tell who knows how to spell correctly, who van avoid making typos, whom knows how to use grammar correct, and who can avoid using, improper punctuation.

      --
      Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
    2. Re:Bloggers are smarter by lelnet · · Score: 3, Offtopic

      >are there not better things to do than take the language too seriously?

      There are definitely better things to do than take the language (or anything else) too seriously...by definition. The question is whether or not insisting on reasonable spelling and grammar constitutes taking the language too seriously, or merely seriously enough.

      For most people who care about such things (and I'll admit without shame that I'm one of them, as I also admit that I'm not entirely without faults in the spelling and grammar department myself), they're simply a very useful shorthand...noticeably poor spelling and/or grammar are an instant tip-off that the person whose work you're reading either is an imbecile or hasn't taken the time to do even minimal checking of their own work. In online media especially, this is an important thing, because other tip-offs about the same problems often aren't available.

      Perhaps you don't think that's an important enough thing to pay attention to. If so, pardon us for disagreeing with you.

    3. Re:Bloggers are smarter by jejones · · Score: 4, Funny

      Now (in theory) blogs will be a lot more literate - or at least slightly less illiterate.

      No, it's just that the illiteracy will be of a different sort; computer-aided, so to speak. A spell checker won't save people who confuse "there," "their," and "they're" or "its" and "it's," use "loose" where they mean "lose," or use apostrophes for plurals.

      Do a web search for "my tail is dun." I burned out on the Xanth series long ago, but I would love to see that little scene from Centaur Aisle handed to everyone entering junior high. Humor drives points home very well indeed.

  3. Google Can afford it by abhikhurana · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I suppose google can afford to offer such serivices for free. Just look at google groups. But I won't be very surprised to see context specific ads on the blogs as well. The strategy google is following is targeted advertising. So if some blogger writes about say IBM Vs SCO, you can expect to see an ad of some Linux solution on top of that blog (Or worse, an MS ad saying you won't have any IP problems with MS). I think its a good idea because like search engine, you know who your target customer is for blogs. So there is indeed a business plan behind this.

    --
    What's under yellowstone?
    1. Re:Google Can afford it by Jotham · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Also one of the main problems Google is currently having with their search results is that too many blogs are ending up in the top results, often ranking higher than the primary site that contains the information that the blogs refer to (due to many blog-users who heavily cross-linking amongst themselves which ups their rating).

      To combat this they've already discussed creating a seperate category for blogs to help seperate these.

      Good to see them taking a proactive stance -- get enough people using your service and you're suddenly got a category of blogs already identified and indexed.

      I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt as they've always been quite responsible with ads and while its a potential revenue stream I don't think they'll ever be as intrusive as other free sites/services.

    2. Re:Google Can afford it by tommertron · · Score: 2, Insightful
      To combat this they've already discussed creating a seperate category for blogs to help seperate these...

      Okay, I don't quite understand the logic of this though. If Pagerank(tm) is supposed to be built off people linking a site because they recommend, aren't blogs a key tool in it? I've always seen Pagerank and a very grassroots tool; it uses people on the Web to suggest things. If thy separate blogs from searches and presumable Pagerank also, who's left to link sites for Pagerank, the corporate business sites? That doesn't seem too useful to me, and seems to open the whole thing up to corporate abuse.

      --
      Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
    3. Re:Google Can afford it by TheViewFromTheGround · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I can understand Google having too many blogs in their search results in most cases. What about cases involving technical questions, such as web design, where the blogs are the best place to look and should be dominating the search results?

      --
      Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
  4. No Business Model? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What about disecting your blogs and turning it into digestable infor they can sell?

  5. we don't need no stinkin' plan by RevDobbs · · Score: 4, Funny
    It's the dot-com frenzy all over again! Free services with no business plan.

    Who needs a business plan? Just make sure that the numbered item before "profit" is "???".

  6. Yeay! by qmrq · · Score: 5, Funny
    Now we get to listen to all the little teenie bopper girls out there talk about makeup problems, who the cutest boy in class is, who kissed who behind whose back..

    We also get to listen to middle-aged women who do the blog thing bitch. Woo!

  7. But hey... by squaretorus · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... as long as there are a stack of short term, overpaid, worthless stock laden jobs up for grabs who's complaining!!

    Let the good times roll (briefly) (again) (maybe)

  8. Squatters by Catharz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's only a matter of time before people start squatting on people's names for their "blog" space. As the post said, it'll be the .com frenzy all over again.

    I used to work for a well known Australian domain name registrar. Some of the stupidity of the .com goldrush was remarkable. One of our sales guys asked for a list of all .com names (up to 6 characters long) that "haven't" been registered. It took one of my fellow developers (one with the patience, determination and ability to keep a straight face) to explain to him and the general manager that it would take at least a month of processing time to generate the list (by which time it would be useless).

    --
    To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
    1. Re:Squatters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Reminds me of the story I heard about a company that wanted a site developed called News Exchange. The domain name they wanted? newsexchange.com.au
      The developers made the company realise the folly of the plan by making the title of the site "NewS exChange"

    2. Re:Squatters by l-ascorbic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Funnily enough, Experts Exchange are no longer to be found at expertsexchange.com. I guess it attracted the wrong kind of clientele.

  9. Livejournal is the standard by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2, Informative
    At least thats where the bigest amount of blogs are.

    --
    http://saveie6.com/
    1. Re:Livejournal is the standard by Infonaut · · Score: 2, Insightful
      At least thats where the bigest amount of blogs are

      And as we all know, quantity DOES equal quality - especially in the world o' blogs. ;-)

      --
      Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
    2. Re:Livejournal is the standard by nhaines · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course it doesn't--but LiveJournal is happily Open Source. :)

    3. Re:Livejournal is the standard by Zigg · · Score: 2, Informative

      Movable Type is most assuredly not Open Source.

      It does not matter for most people's use, but it's still incorrect to say that it is.

      </PEDANTIC>

    4. Re:Livejournal is the standard by Firehawke · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's not so much "snob-appeal" as finding themselves taking in more users than their hardware could handle. In the end, they had to limit things just to keep enough funding coming in to keep the servers running.

      Of course, you don't have to have an invite code if you pay for your account outright.

  10. Blog-quality post on blogging by Empiric · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Random, haphazard thoughts on this...

    It'd be really nice to have some kind of comparison list for various blog sites out there. I note from the blogger.com information, that they're still not making RSS part of the free service level, something which (ahem) LiveJournal offers on their free accounts.

    I wonder if blogger.com has a client app... Semagic will autocreate your HTML and other handy stuff (including spellcheck) to make posting as easy as sending an instant message.

    They also have friends lists, communities, and a bunch of stuff I haven't had time to check out.

    Which brings up a core question... why have the blog format at all? In a lot of cases, it seems to just be a higher-tech version of rants written in a personal journal (as browsing some of them indicates), but I think eventually widespread adoption will happen simply because people will want some some way to tie their writing back to themselves. For most community sites/systems (Usenet, IRC, ...Slashdot... as prototypical examples), everyone could just be named a variant of joe13234, and it would make no functional difference. Some people (lawyers, politicians, analysts, etc.) are essentially paid for their comments, and a weblog can be seen as an extension of their work that provides a meaningful tieback to themselves.

    On the dot-com thing... it seems like everything on the net, private IP or not, is being forced into a shareware model, in effect. Some fraction of the public using a system will toss a few bucks in the direction of the provider, and IMHO people will need to realize that they need to do this occasionally or we'll end up with extremely high-bandwidth connections to nothing. Even if you don't pay for everything, paying for something, even semi-randomly, helps keep the wheels of the net turning.

    I now submit my comment to the traditional, ritual Slashdot assault.

    --
    ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
  11. Former members by Flingles · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What happens to the members who just signed up? I would feel pretty bad if I payed my $35 to find out it's free 2 months later. Do they have any advantages over free users?

    --
    Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
    1. Re:Former members by Timesprout · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
      What truth?
      There is no dupe
    2. 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."

    3. Re:Former members by nacturation · · Score: 3, Funny

      I would feel pretty bad if I payed my $35 to find out it's free 2 months later. Do they have any advantages over free users?

      Sure there are advantages, like the new built-in spellchecker which would tell you that there's no such word as payed but that you're likely looking for the word paid.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
  12. This worries me... by shadowcabbit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One of the main reasons I use Blogger on my site is because it makes it easy to alert visitors to the latest things I've put up. Rather than hack away at HTML and PHP, which I do enough of already, I just pop open a BlogThis! and go. The automation and ease of use are what I really like (and it has sort of tempted me to blather on like an idiot about random crap, but what's a blog for if not that?).

    Now they're removing the barriers between the paid service, which I did not subscribe to, and the free service. They say they're doing this because Google owns them, and there's no reason to have people pay them. Aside from the fact that that sounds completely nuts, I wonder what's going to change. Other folks here have mentioned text ads-- well, I don't want that. So far my site is ad-free, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

    Alternately, what if BlogThis! goes away-- or worse, requires you to view an ad before it'll open? This seems like the more likely scenario, because in this case the targeted audience isn't the people reading the blogs (think about it, how many hits does Aunt Mabel's Church Society blog really get?) but rather the people writing the blogs. Fill out a survey when you sign up and you too can blog for the low low cost of nothing plus time to read the same advertisement for scotch tape that you've read on every other site!

    Of course, none of that is confirmed yet. But it'll happen, I bet.

    (and no, this is not a thinly-veiled attempt to get people to visit my site)

    --
    "Why Subscribe?" Good question...
    1. Re:This worries me... by rmohr02 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Alternately, what if BlogThis! goes away-- or worse, requires you to view an ad before it'll open? This seems like the more likely scenario, because in this case the targeted audience isn't the people reading the blogs (think about it, how many hits does Aunt Mabel's Church Society blog really get?) but rather the people writing the blogs. Fill out a survey when you sign up and you too can blog for the low low cost of nothing plus time to read the same advertisement for scotch tape that you've read on every other site!
      Considering Google's track record, this seems highly unlikely. Google has found that targetted text ads to the side of the page work much more effectively than popups or annoying banner ads.
  13. I wouldnt worry for google by acegik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  14. LiveJournal is much more worthy of note by SynKKnyS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After all, LiveJournal is completely Open Source. Subscription only gives you added features, but the free version does not even have ad banners. The site is completely funded by subscriptions and donations. A few other sites have spun off thanks to the freely available code, including DeadJournal.

    1. Re:LiveJournal is much more worthy of note by shione · · Score: 2, Informative

      you can try it here: livejournal test server

      You get the full privileges of a paid account to test out which is better than opening a free account on the main servers to test.

      Only disadvantage with the test server is your account could be purged anytime but that shouldn't be a worry if you're just testing how things work.

      enjoy :)

  15. Smart move by insecuritiez · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Smart move by kmarius · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm afraid that Google will become too big. They have searches for almost everything (web, usenet, news, shopping) and are continually expanding. They are so popular that they have become part of the language ("googling for information")

      I know this is because they offer a good service, at least the web-search and usenet parts are good, but they are becoming very dominant. Google is probably the start page of many browsers, and that means they have a power over how people find information. Google is quickly becoming the portal for information, and is continually expanding into other markets

      This can't be good for competition

    2. Re:Smart move by insecuritiez · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I was waiting for someone to say that. Google is becoming big. But I don't see them hurting competition just yet. As long as MSN is around Google has competition. Maybe not technically but as for user-base it does. Millions upon millions have IE set to MSN and even more millions have MSN internet service defaulted to MSN. There is no way Google can compete with a default setting. And "educating" them about MSN and alternatives won't work because a lot of them don't even know that MSN is a webpage.

  16. Some thanks! by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2, Funny
    Here's a picture of the Blogger guys making fun of a poor handicapped person at Google. Geez, they think they own the place.

    I am so going to blog about this.

  17. Reasons for making it free by eric2701 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bet google has modified this software ( or is planning to in the future,) so that doesn't clobber there search results as much. Maybe they are building in tags and such so that there regular bots won't be as confused by all the links between blogs. Since this is a growing problem for them, it would make sense to try and preempt it.

  18. Blogs indexed separately? by bs_02_06_02 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Has google ceased to index blogs with the rest of the web? I know there was some grumbling in the past months about this.
    I just got an account on the freeware blogger from google. The PRO was down. I don't think I would have paid for the "pro" features. Just like I wouldn't pay for a free email box.
    Blogging is the online method of talking to the bartender. It's kind of relaxing... until you realize you have no idea who you are talking to.

    --
    -- No sig for you!
  19. 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. :)
  20. blargh. by edrugtrader · · Score: 4, Interesting

    maybe they just want the content...

    bloggers create thousands of well written reviews of software/hardware/music/movies/porn, and google could index it, figure out what people like and sell that data to advertisers...... they bascially own the output of thousands of wanna be writers for a drop in the bucket.

    sure, a normally company to offer these services would be a horrid business model, but already profitable google only needs a few more comodity servers and probably no more techies to maintain this... why not...

    plus google text ads will probably be there.

    personally i use marketbanker.com to sell and display text ads (which, incidently, google has removed from their search index... monopoly anyone? that was the first "evil corporate move" i have ever seen google make.)

    --
    MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
  21. Million Monkeys at a million Typewriters by t0qer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What are the TOS for this? Do they own your comments/Blogs?

  22. Why a cliche? by iamacat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Whoever said a business must charge everyone for everything in order to make money? I can watch some free shows on antenna or download some Linux ISOs, but UPN and Redhat are still around

    I would guess either Blogger Pro didn't have that many subscribers or they have plans to get free users pay for other things later. Maybe even sell books based on highest-moderated posts. Like every business decision its a gamble, but we don't have enough information to assume that Google is run by a bunch of idiots.

  23. archive? time capsule? by golgotha007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  24. Spell-checker - is there a 13-y-o angst mode? by KNicolson · · Score: 4, Funny

    Cuz lst tym 1 luk'd @ rndm blogz 90% wuz thiz kinz f shizz.

    Ugg, even more painful to write than read!

  25. But I've already got free blogger software by kfg · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's called "vi."

    KFG

  26. Whee! Funn Boggly Poast! by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2, Informative
    Uh, This marketbanker.com? If you view the source, they could use a meta tag or keywords or something...and marketbanker isn't really a name that I think of when I'm looking for text ads. I tried a few other things but it won't come up.

    A link(client/customer) of theirsPassthison.com made we want to kill and kill again, however. There's some javascript popup alert that comes up every time you roll over it. I happened to have the offending link positioned under the box, so every time I dissmissed it, another took its place with godawful inane sayings about 30 times before I was able to run away..

    I don't think Google *needs* to exibit monopoly power. The net has proved itself run by idiots, with tardy design skills.

  27. funny, except... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... the joke is getting old. The blogs I read are written by .) An important book publisher (O'reilly) .) cartoonists whose cartoons I read (Penny Arcade, Tom Tommorrow) .) Famous Political Comedian (Bill Maher) .) a Bagdad resident (or two) DURING the war...

    I save that last one because that's the real deal... say it was teenage girls talking about makeup. That's real information for someone around the world wondering what is really going on. They could see how decadent and comfortable Wesertern miseries can be. Or we can see what's going on in Bagdad. The question of was it all made up came up, and it wasn't. It's proven a real person, and he is being honest within the range of his own biases, which again, is the point, these are people not journalists.

    Yes, it's nice, it's vital to have journalists that try to be objective... but no one can really be objective, it's just as important to here all the biases in the world, not hidden beneath a veil of objectivity-seeming.

    The blog is the web.

    The original web pages were basically blogs. Not by date, but still, people had a little about them, their hobbies. Of course some of those hobbies were also full time jobs researching particle physics or medical science, but still, basically a personal page. It was a lot of IT workers, personal pages.

    The blog makes that medium more chronological and therefore easier to produce changes for, in an era when a lot of different -types- of pages (web applications mind you) have been explored.

    Anonymous because I'm so right I don't want to seem, you know, overly perfect or arrogant. Oh damn!

    1. 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.

    2. Re:funny, except... by fenix+down · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Same difference. You have so much overlap between the two that it doesn't really matter. Unless you're Anne Frank, you're not publishing a journal on the web without acknowledging other web sites. And no blogger does anything but relating links that he personally enjoyed.

      Blogging isn't some selfless public service. It's just as narcissistic as any other personal site. Bloggers are promoting their own interests through the words of others. Maybe it's more interesting to read than someone just promoting themselves, but it's no less self-absorbed.

    3. Re:funny, except... by ryantate · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

      Does having a popular weblog somehow give _you_ the right to define what weblogging is or should be, what is included and excluded? Or are you basing this on some survey of weblogs out there?

      I certainly don't consider your non-personal blog any more authentic than things like this that were exploring personal topics eight years ago. Dave Winer has been posting psuedo-diary entries on Scripting News and DaveNet since the mid-1990s.

      How dare you try to define weblogging for the rest of us.

  28. First Unabashed-Lovefest Post by lewp · · Score: 3, Funny

    How many companies just do downright nice things anymore? Wild speculation aside, until there's a reason for me to feel otherwise, I fucking love you, Google.

    --
    Game... blouses.
  29. Re:archive? time capsule? by shadowcabbit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    If you use the Blogger tool to update a non-blogspot site-- such as, say, a personal site on a registered domain-- the text of the blog, formatted exactly as it appears on your page, is stored on your server. Within blogspot, I dunno, but if you decide that all the advertising you want to do for Blogger is a little icon on an otherwise ad-free page, then you still have a copy of all your data. I would assume that that includes the fact that you have all the rights to it, but IANAL and nor do I really care-- for the most part, there's usually nothing on a blog that's worth copyrighting anyway.

    --
    "Why Subscribe?" Good question...
  30. Re:hello young person, toke on this crack its free by MonTemplar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Me? I paid the $39.95 up-front and got Radio Userland. The content stays on my PC at home, and gets published to my own webspace.

    Personally, I think that it should be the other way round, you pay so much a year, but only for the number of services you require. At the moment, part of the $39.95 I just paid covers the cost of hosting at Weblogs.com, as well as the space for comments on the weblog, and the trackback system. I don't need the first, and I'm not sure I really need the last one. Of course, it would be a pain to do pricing if you were to pick-n-choose...

    MT.

    --
    -MT.
  31. Why the typical slashdot Hate? by juuri · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  32. Ways to meet people online. by unsung · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Don't forget about the recent link to Yahoo exploring blogs. Along with being a great source of information, blogs are methods to meet others of similar interests online. Quite a few people in this day and age have tried chatrooms, Match.com, Friendster, ... This is perhaps another avenue and adds one further layer of emersion.

  33. Smart Move by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Obviously no company will give something away unless there is something in it for them. I think that Google has something up their sleeve.

    Couldn't they data-mine the blogs to get really accurate, really contemporary search results? They - for very little money - would have a legion of people out there categorizing the web for them. Who needs an easily-fooled bot when you can have a bunch of bloggers doing all the work?

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  34. Response To Google Bombing? by polyp2000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe this is google's response to Google bombing. Since weblogs seem to be the breeding ground for google bombs, maybe having more control over them might be the solution to cutting down instances.

    --
    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
  35. Re:archive? time capsule? by Dusabre · · Score: 2, Informative

    Seems you don't know much about Blogger. Blogger allows you to keep your stuff (all files, including web pages) on your own server. It actually encourages you to do so. Blogger basically just generates your html for you (and spell check and allows posting via a toolbar etc). You can arrange web space if you need it. Which is cool. No real risk if you don't want it.

  36. Re:No free lunch! by shione · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If this blog site gets overwelming market share over the other free journal sites out there, google would have achieved it by the users signing up on their own free will. Internet Explorer's market share came when they started bundling it with the OS. Users didnt have to do anything except upgrade their OS and it would be there whether they wanted it or not.

  37. Explorer versus Netscape all over again? by EnlightenmentFan · · Score: 3, Funny
    Is anybody else reminded of the way Microsoft "outcompeted" Netscape's much better browser software? First it started giving away its browser for free, and when that wasn't enough to switch people away from Netscape's (then better) browser, it went on from there.

    Google bought Blogger, Google controls Blogger, and Google has an obvious stake in getting people to use its very own software. Is Blogger the best blogging software you can use? Consider this unscientific "Google research" of various strings:

    "I hate xxx" + weblog

    xxx = blogger 121
    xxx = radio 39
    xxx = manila 0
    xxx = movable type 0

    "I love xxx" + weblog

    xxx = blogger 233
    xxx = radio 212
    xxx = manila 101
    xxx = movable type 160

    "xxx is down"

    xxx = blogger 760
    xxx = manila 1

    "something is wrong with xxx"

    xxx = blogger 27
    xxx = radio 0
    xxx = manila 0
    xxx = movable type 1

    "xxx just ate"
    xxx = blogger 279
    xxx = radio 2
    xxx = manila 0
    xxx = movable type 0

    "xxx sucks"

    xxx = blogger 1070
    xxx = radio (here I added "userland" to eliminate stuff like "Denver radio sucks") 136
    xxx = manila 45, many of them referring to a city in the Philippines
    xxx = movable type 58

    I've used both Blogger and Manila, and let me make that 1071 for the next google search: Blogger sucks.

    --
    Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
  38. Google turning into Microsoft of Web Already? by sjanes71 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This doesn't make any sense, to take a small, profitable bit of software (not profitable enough to offset bandwidth charges perhaps but it was making money) and then start giving it away-- this is obviously a move to kill the marketshare of products like Movable Type which has a commercial and non-commercial license and Radio Userland which I think is purely commercial-- so that users will use Google's blogging system in preference to probably AOL Journals, another free system that seeks to wipe-out the marketshare of another popular blogging or "Journal" system, LiveJournal .

    I'm not saying that competition is bad-- but history has shown us that anyone giving something away of a class that was previously valued for real money is typically doing it for anti-competitive reasons. It might not be long before something like:

    1. Background. In 1998, the United States sued Microsoft, alleging violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, 2.(1) After trial, the court found Microsoft had violated Section 2 by unlawfully maintaining its monopoly in the market for Intel-compatible PC operating systems ("OSs") and by unlawfully attempting to monopolize the market for internet browsers, and that it had violated Section 1 by illegally tying its Windows operating system and its Internet Explorer ("IE") browser. The court ordered Microsoft to submit a plan of divestiture that would split the company into an OS business and an applications business, and ordered interim conduct restrictions. Microsoft, 253 F.3d at 45.
    becomes something like:
    1. Background. In 2006, the United States sued Google, alleging violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, 2.(1) After trial, the court found Google had violated Section 2 by unlawfully maintaining its monopoly in the market for personal content management systems ("blogs") and by unlawfully attempting to monopolize the market for search engines, and that it had violated Section 1 by illegally tying its search engine and its journaling ("blog") software. The court ordered Google to submit a plan of divestiture that would split the company into an search engine business and an applications business, and ordered interim conduct restrictions. Google, 253 F.3d at 45.

    The collective Internet should reevaluate models like Freenet and make a "weaker," more light-weight distributed peer-to-peer information distribution system-- its weaker because you simply don't need the overhead of hardcore anonymity and privacy because pretty much all of the users will want to be "found" by those reading on the Internet. Google's got enough brains to figure out how to make that searcable so we need not worry about that.

    1. Re:Google turning into Microsoft of Web Already? by MonTemplar · · Score: 3, Informative

      I very much doubt that Blogger & Google together could become the dominant force in the weblogging world. The appeal of Blogger is its simplicity and the fact that you don't need to have your own webspace up-front. MovableType is aimed at people who want to put a weblog onto their own webspace that runs from the webserver. Radio Userland, although it can give you webspace if you need it, will happily let you publish your weblog to your own site, with the content stored on your PC (I'm using it for my site). LiveJournal (the site) works in a similar way to Blogger, but you can take LiveJournal (the software) and use that on your own site.

      The idea that Blogger can somehow 'lock-in' the majority of content of the weblogging world is, to my mind, a bit of a stretch. It would require breaking the existing API, and possibly interfering with other technologies such as RSS, and would do more harm than good for both Blogger and Google.

      MT.

      --
      -MT.
  39. What about Slashdot Journals? by cyranoVR · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When is slashdot going to let us link to images in our journals? I don't want to go over to blogspot or *shudder* livejournal, but every time I see one of those pages I feel a pang of jealousy.

    At least add one or two more features! At least we could be allowed to choose what section (and thus color-scheme) our journal goes under?

  40. They're just meeting the competition's prices by hatless · · Score: 3, Informative

    Movable Type--which has comments, RSS and Trackback by default--is free for personal use as long as you can do your own hosting. If you want a remotely hosted blog on their recently-launched TypePad.com site, you pay $5 or so a month.

    Blogger is now making comments, RSS and such free as long as you do your own hosting of the generated files. If you want a blog with these features hosted on their Blogspot.com site, you pay $5 a month.

    It's called responding to competition. With more and more blogging systems offering things like RSS and comments for free to people who posted to their own existing webspace, Blogger had to add those features to its free offering. The revenue is in hosting and ads and maybe in commercial licenses and services. I don't imagine that bring-your-own-hosting Blogger Plus was drawing too many new subscribers in recent months.