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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?"
Then why are all the people still using it regardless?
It's not as if the other mentioned services (such as Wordpress) don't have free alternatives.
If you're serious about it all, you would buy your own domain, and use (and customize) any CMS to your liking.
I find it very funny to see these complaints (definitely "They've been neglecting it for years" ; Then why are you still blogging on there?
On a related topic, the usenet groups I subscribe to are getting a ridiculous amount of spam recently from gmail accounts. On a given day, you'll get, say, 10 new posts, each with its own distinct subject line, trying to sell watches or running shoes. They're all from the same gmail account. It doesn't do you any good to plonk that gmail account, because the next day it's 10 new spams from some new gmail account. It's gotten to the point where I'm considering just filtering out all posts that come from gmail accounts. I'm guessing this is happening because google has relaxed their conditions for getting a gmail account, and at the same time the spammers are getting more sophisticated about solving captchas. The impression I get is that google is starting to feel the need to grow into their ridiculously large market capitalization, and they can only do that by bringing in lots of new users. If that means letting in lots of spambots too, well ...
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Its audience are the masses, and for those it's a very easy to use and convenient tool. If you need pro features, because your blog is so sophisticated, choose a pro service provider instead and stop whining! Sounds like targeted fud. Why else would one cite a six year old story about a "security flaw"?
Google is the Neal Stephenson of companies. Promising starts, interesting ideas, and a chronic failure to finish.
> Is Blogger destined to be a sideshow...?
Could well be. I'd demand a refund.
There are plenty of examples of other companies that are behind the curve in some respect or another. In most cases people do the rational thing -- they vote with their feet. Er, fingers. So why is this a story? Because it's Google.
People tend to tip over the tallest ivory towers, and shorter ones get left alone. This tendency is so strong that people fail to recognize when they're complaining about something that's not only free, but intended to be a billboard for their host's advertising, something which in other situations would be the focus of their complaints.
Mark my prophecy: Someday some company is going to produce a desktop Linux so good that it's going to catch on and become if not a major competitor in the OS market, then at least the major distro of Linux. And they will suffer the same fate, becoming the punching bag of the Linux community, while lesser distros have no fewer problems and gather fewer complaints. And of those complaining, many will have obtained the free version of the distro. They will be out nothing, but will feel somehow justified because of the stature of their target, and will do so with gusto despite the fact that equally good distros are available to which they could switch. This irrationality will escape them, as it does the author of TFA.
The nature of the beast here is cognitive dissonance and perceived value. Biggest gets equated with best. Best carries the same weight as monetary investment, in that it's a perceived value, the association with the biggest name being the source of that. But when there is no actual investment the fact of the lack of actual investment fact starts to come to mind. The contradiction produces cognitive dissonance. To suppress that, the complaining becomes more vehement in this situation than in equally problematic situations with products or services of less perceived value garnering fewer complaints. So strong is this tendency that even when there is actual value in terms of money spent, the amount of complaints is out of proportion with the number of problems compared to other products or services that can even cost less or nothing.
Evidence to support the above assertion? Simple: it continues to occur even when those suffering from the contradiction are made aware of it. Even when told they are wearing Don Quixote's hat, they will still tilt at that largest windmill. Just watch.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
There are _dozens_ of decent, free to use blogging software packages out there. Anyone with "hello world" experience in PHP or Ruby could make one in about an hour anyway. If Blogger isn't keeping up with features then why care? I mean really... why? Better software has died an untimely firey death than Blogger (Amiga Workbench, I mourn you still...)
Perhaps they prefer Orkut? Then again I don't use Orkut so I don't know if it's in a better situation.
I would imagine Blogger is better and more well know so they should drop Orkut and focus on one but if Blogger is really popular already they may feel they don't have to waste the resources.
Google will just acquire some other company that already developed all these new Blog features and then just implement them into their own. Same goes with the Captcha security issue.
I don't think we'll see blogger improving. Just like it happened when they bought Writely, they may not care that much about the product the company is selling, but the team that does it. Blogger seems to be in "mainteinance mode", they may have a small team working on maintaining and keeping it up to date while the rest of the people works on a "blogger killer". They haven't even tried to integrate blogger with the rest of Google apps (blogger interrupts the service some times for "mainteinance", something that would never happen in a google app)
They're making it sound like it's almost impossible to opt out of the content network
No, they're saying that Google made the "content network" opt-in by default, in a way that's misleading and deceptive. It's like having an order form with some item you probably don't want stuck on the form with an empty "Quantity" blank. If you don't explicitly put 0 in the blank, you're billed for the unwanted product.
I have tried a variety of Google services, and generally abandoned them when I hit a wall with functionality. Google Docs (ahem. footnotes?), picasaweb, Blogger, calendar, their site making tool - I really tried to make them useful, but in each case, they fell short. I still use gmail, maps, and the search engine itself, and I love Google scholar.