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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?"
Absolutely! I just came in here to say this.
For my part, I eventually did cave in and block Google Groups-originating posts entirely. I've seen, possibly, five spam messages on any of my favorite newsgroups during the three weeks that I've been blocking Google.
The company has, in point of fact, exhibited a tendency to neglect some of its services over time. This is bad enough when it comes to Blogger -- people put in many hours to become established there, although let's face it, it's not as though they have a service-level agreement with Google. But neglecting Google Groups and refusing to act upon numerous spam reports, to the extent that groups like comp.lang.python and rec.bicycles.tech become absolutely useless you block all GG-originating posts? That's inexcusable. If this were anyone other than Google they would have been issued the UDP a long time ago.
So yes, by all means, block Google Groups, because they have chronically and increasingly failed to fulfill their responsibilities to the Usenet community. And put a message in your signature to this effect, so that Google Groups posters will know why you are ignoring their articles; and so that they will consider moving to a different service.