Why Does Blogger.com Suck?
Amid all the chat about whether Google Spreadsheets is another part of Google's strategy to take on Microsoft, it got me thinking about why Google has given so little love to Blogger.com. The blogosphere is exploding with 75,000 new blogs created a day yet Google has really done nothing of significance since buying Blogger.com (Pyra) in 2003. Sure, there have been some improvements but Blogger.com is still more known as the tool of choice for sploggers than a top-notch blogging platform. Google has a so much money and an army of programmers that improving Blogger would seem like a pretty straightforward assignment. They could easily implement a whole bunch of new features (trackbacks would be a good start) and maybe introduce a premium version that includes more bells and whistles. While blogging is becoming more popular, the competitive landscape is still wide open. The top players (Wordpress, Six Apart, Blogware) are small and battling away to build a critical mass of users - and it's seen as big news when Six Part raised a whopping $12-million. Given it's still early days, you figure Google would be smart enough to aggressively jump-start its blog platform strategy rather than "fooling around" with me-too services such as spreadsheets, databases and notepads. Maybe we can't grasp Sergey and Larry's master plan (if, in fact, they have one) but giving Blogger.com some more love seems like a no-brainer.
June 8th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Mark….you are absolutely right. I use Blogger right now and can't believe how limited it is to use. With Google's programming power behind it you would think that there would be more templates, an easier way to show comments on the main web site….etc, etc. Mind you wordpress is not much better….it is still early days in the web 2.0 world - we can only hope that the software catches up to the passion
June 8th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
This past weekend i moved my blog to wordpress from blogger. (i didn't even know the google thing. yes i've been living under a rock) So far i've found word press easier to use than blogger - for example you can add tags really easily.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
As usual, I'm here to disagree. Blogger is actually the best blogging platform on the market. The problem is that Blogspot was so overwhelmed with splogs that it became a joke to call almost any blogspot blog a splog. In fact, IceRocket specifically rejected all new blogspot blogs as a measure to contain splogs. I myself, have added the keyword blogspot to my spam filter. The second problem was that Blogger blogs did not support RSS, but rather Atom. This is a marketing problem. People were scared away because they wanted RSS and didn't know that Atom was a worthy replacement.
These two things have changed in the last few weeks. I'm seeing very few Blogspot splogs these days and Blogger recently added support for RSS.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Just yesterday I commented on the Blogger thing as well - glad to see more people doing so.
http://www.igotnewsforyou.com/blog/2006/06/why-doesnt-google-invest-more-in.html
And others are commenting too: http://mcbsconsulting.blogspot.com/2006/06/more-blogger-problems.html
It strikes me as odd that Google doesn't invest in Blogger when to me it seems like it could be more a part of their core strategy (search / ads) than the other things they're doing. And people have been making noise for awhile, so either we're all loopy or Google knows something we don't. I'd vote with the people myself.
June 12th, 2006 at 9:23 am
kids - maybe they're just hanging back and waiting… letting the critical mass build before pulling the towel out of the ring, squeezing it out and then throwing it back in.
google does have a lot going on - true - but one thing they do not do is move swiftly. small incremental changes to their online products is the way they typcally operate, and i think that's what you're seeing here.
June 13th, 2006 at 12:13 am
If blogger.com and wordpress isn't best blog - then which blog program is best right now?
July 11th, 2006 at 6:44 am
http://www.bloxster.net is much better service to get a free blog from then blogger. There is always something wrong at blogger. My free weblog from bloxster is never down and has lots of cool features.