:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 2.25.2003 ::

:: Blogger Gets Googley-Eyed - story research ::

I'm currently researching a story on the Google/Blogger deal for a monthly computer rag, sending out e-mail interview requests. Here's a great early response from Anil Dash:

I think the immediate impetus behind the Google/Pyra deal was a simple need for more resources by Pyra, along with a recognition on Google's part that Blogger, in addition to providing data that is useful to Google's index, provides a service that is valued and important on the net, but wasn't reaching its full potential due to resource constraints in the smaller company.

That being said, there's no doubt that people on both sides of the deal understood that there would be larger opportunities down the road. We're already seeing some of those things taking place, with the presence of Google Text Ads on BlogSpot's hosted weblogs.

But I think there was a more benevolent, less directed motivation behind the deal, and that the later implications are just starting to enter the dialogue between the newly merged companies. A lot of those future possibilities are being discussed, such as being able to index links and content in Blogger weblogs as they're created, and being able to extract richer meaning from the sites that use Blogger to update.

My initial concern, which is an issue that can't really be debated either way until we've seen some changes to the service, is that any special benefits afforded Blogger's sites will privilege them in the Google index over non-Blogger weblogs, such as those powered by Movable Type, Radio Userland, and LiveJournal. Given Google's historically neutral position in indexing content, it's a radical shift, and one that leaves me concerned that they're created a higher tier of content for the first time, based solely on the tool that was used to create it.

All of that being said, Google's had a terrific track record of doing things the "Right Way" so far. I hope they keep it up. But most of the arguments that people have made so far about improving Google's index by owning Blogger and BlogSpot are ones that would make more sense when applied to weblogs as a whole. Having deeper links to one tool's output doesn't make any more sense with Blogger than it would if Google had a deeper index of pages created by FrontPage or by BBEdit or by DreamWeaver.

I'm very glad to see a big, established company recognize the value of weblogs. Frankly, it's about time that it happened. I'm just hoping that it's clear that the value is in their links, content, and networking, not in the tool that creates them, and not in a subset of the entire realm of weblogs.

posted by me

:: 6:00:00 PM [+] ::
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