Google + Blogger = Bloring
Tuesday, February 25th, 2003Those of us in Baghdad must be thrilled to see America’s A-list bloggers still focused on the big question facing global civilization: Why did Google buy Blogger?
As a former search engine worker, the answer seemed pretty obvious: The deal’s terms made it more attractive for Google to buy rather than build a blog-scraping system to improve their search results. Automatically scoring human behavior on the Internet is Google’s core competency, and high-availability Web services are one of their strengths. By hosting Pyra’s servers at Google (the one part of the plan actually acknowledged by both companies), the company can incorporate the latest postings from thousands of human link hunters into both its database and scoring system, all with the goal of serving better results to its search customers.
Claims that Google will become a weblog portal, or that the purchase was done to help (or squash) the proverbial little guy, or that This Changes Everything (as opposed to This Should Improve Google Search Results), are just wishful thinking. A Blogger-infused Google is a great idea, but hardly a defining moment for the Internet. That’s why instead of writing the 25th speculative story on Google/Blogger for the press, I’m leaving them alone to work on it. When it’s up and running, it’ll be much more interesting.
