Slashdot Mirror
Is Google Neglecting Blogger?
Ian Lamont writes "For years, I've been frustrated by Blogger's relatively limited functionality and other problems. For instance, we've heard about Blogger's security flaws since the beginning of this decade. Blogger's latest problem, which lets bots bypass CAPTCHAs in order to set up spam blogs, is not just a sign of Google's disregard for security — it's symptomatic of Google's neglect of its Blogger service. For instance, Blogger is just now rolling out a feature that lets writers publish in the future, years after similar functionality was released in Wordpress and Moveable Type. Is Blogger destined to be a sideshow as long as Google keeps acquiring and building more high-profile services, such as Google Maps and YouTube?"
Everyone knows the drill by now, don't click the 40 year old virgin's link.
IMO they are also neglecting Picasa, especially the Picasaweb. Adobe and Flickr are doing a much better job of updating their online photo sharing sites. What about Google Finance, Google Talk, and even Google Docs. All things that seen to be lagging in development.
You realize that 'from' headers in emails and usenet posts aren't authenticated in any way, right? People can put whatever address/domain they want in there... gmail, slashdot, nasa etc.
Maps was in house:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-your-way.html
Or at least, it was acquired before it was launched.
Via:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Development_history
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Blogger is not without utility. However, a bit of a "feature War" has sprung up between it and Wordpress, and Wordpress's abilities have expanded far beyond that of Blogger's.
Google hasn't been neglecting Blogger so much as Blogger has been getting PWNED by faster-developing companies who can roll out more / better features faster.
I call bullshit, to parent and all the responses.
Open page creator, look to the right at "uploaded stuff", click browse, select html file.
http://noglorp.googlepages.com/firefox.htm
- theres the firefox start page, saved and then uploaded to page creator. It looks all fucked because the image paths don't work, but the html itself it totally unmodified.
It's had its ups and downs since then with respect to the volume of spam. (Thanks to Google, the present timeframe is definitely one of the "downs".) But yeah, Usenet is still around, and it's not going away any time soon.
Many programming and other technology-related groups are still very active. Usenet is one of the best places to go for advice on the C programming language (comp.lang.c), information about PICs (sci.electronics.design), Linux advice (comp.os.linux.misc), or even cooking tips (rec.food.cooking).
Usenet has its weaknesses, but it also has some unique strengths versus Web-based discussion forums: everything is organized (more or less) hierarchically; the user interface is whatever you want it to be; and it's easy to download and archive interesting posts. These features appeal to enough people, apparently, to keep it going...
It's harder to fake the other headers, created by news servers en route, and if you look at all headers:
It's clear that they really are being sent from Google Groups accounts. The "Path" header alone tells you that, and it can be faked in part, but this for instance is Google from start to finish.The awful thing is that for many people Google Groups is the only usenet access they have, as their ISPs drop support and refer those who want it to Google.
IN many groups recently over 90% of the messages are spam sent from Google Groups accounts. Complaining is pointless, there is no mechanism to get any response from Google, no way to have these messages filtered at source, or even from the display shown by Google Groups. Many people using conventional NNTP newsreaders are simply killfiling everything from Google. But Google doesn't care, it still sells ads to put on its Google Groups pages. The advertisers are their customers, not those who post and read usenet.