google's first mistake

I don't really *know* anything, but my guess is that Google got a bargain. How much cash was Ev sitting on?

Google can write it off as an R&D purchase. They can use their 100% (I'm assuming) access to the Blogger content and back-end to beta test news, micropublishing, and comment searching. When these tools are mature, they can roll them out publicly.

If nothing else, Blogger *is* the biggest blogging company with a revenue stream and a strong brand. No one calls it "Moveable Typing," even if that's what the kids are into nowadays.

All good points. The part I just can't get past, however, is "Google's mission is to deliver the best search experience on the Internet by making the world's information universally accessible and useful."

That just doesn't click with this.

Surely once they properly integrate PostRank technology into the search function, we will all be able to successfully, quickly search for the Harry Potter vibrating broomstick story. It's win-win!

You ever think that it might be altruism? Maybe they'll just leave Pyra as a stand-alone business. Unlikely, but I bet it didn't cost them very much, and it is the kind of thing I can imagine Eric Schmidt doing.

Thanks,
Tim

P.S. You were right about a Berkeley Gawker. How about a Berkeley city blog? (http://www.berkeleyblog.com)

Minor nit: Google Answers is a for-pay service. But I don't know how much of the cost goes to Google versus the researchers. I don't use it, anyway.

If I use Movable Type, does that make me a thought leader? Maybe I'll switch to Xanga.

I agree, as most people would, that any "Bloggle" index would have to be inclusive of all weblog tools. Nobody has mentioned bbt, b2, greymatter, ad nauseum.

Seems to me that acquiring Blogger jives pretty well with Google's mission. Part of making information accessible for Google's users is getting it on the Internet in the first place. Diverse content sources make Google's service more valuable.

I'm not sure of the logic behind Google's purchase of Pyra. I'm even less sure why Ev (and all the others Pyra) decided this was the way to go.

How will Blogger/Pyra fit into Google's current strategy? I'm not sure if it does? Although they now access to one of the biggest content databases on the internet. Perhaps Google can take Blogger's development even further than it has already come.

I just hope all the people behind Blogger (past and present) don't get shafted in this deal.

A better story would've been "Pyra buys Google", now that would have been news.

Tim, you're right. Answers and Google's Ads themselves are for-pay services. But I meant a service that required a general user base to pay to use it. This raises the question of whether Google sees webloggers paying to act as, essentially, self-advertisers.

Every blog entry is a big text ad for meeee.

Excuse me, but my take here is that though a few of you may have some technical or inside knowledge of all this it still comes across like you all (especially the people saying: "I don't know. It *just* doesn't seem like a good fit..." are manufacturing a stance on the spot, and secretly you all ARE buzzing over this. Just my take...

Good point about Deja, Anil, but I have to say that I definitely am buzzing about this - not that I want any blog created by another tool to be a "second class citizen," but it's still so exciting, the thought of a Google search on blogs the way you can search Usenet. I guess I just have too much naive faith in Google, they've never made *anyone* a second-class citizen in their results, and so I imagine any kind of blog search they implement will of course start with Blogger content but also include other-tool-generated blogs, from radio to mt to my very own homegrown thang....
at least I hope.

The one thing all the commentary so far is focused on are the effect on personal blogs and Google's current provision of all 'personal' services at no charge.

But what no one has mmentioned, and may really be the key, is that Pyra has/is about to have a version of Blogger written more or less completely in Java that can be deployed on any server. The Globo deal was just the tip of the iceberg, they (Ev and Jason) wanted to sell this into corporations for a few $k per server. Combine that with Google search appliance and maybe another odd piece or two and you have a very sophisticated, valuable Intranet addition.

The part I just can't get past, however, is "Google's mission is to deliver the best search experience on the Internet by making the world's information universally accessible and useful."

I thought this was their mission, too, and even interpreted the Google News front page mainly as a demonstration piece, to reinforce the message that, Hey, we're the place to search for news, too. But I also emailed them asking, Is there a simple news search page, like Google's main front page (or the front pages for Image search, Froogle, and every other dang thing the Googlebot crawls), where I can just plain old search for news items, and not have to wait for that whole front page to load -- and the email back was, Nope, no plans for that as yet, but thanks for your thoughts.

So, yeah. I don't quite know what they're doing, either.

http://boingboing.net/2003_02_01_archive.html#90330803

I agree that this is about the impact on other companies - those without the vision of google - and the VCs and Angels. Google has the 'commercial pagerank' to influence what happens next and they just blessed some cool new stuff, both directly and indirectly. A lot more thoughts at my site.

for how much?

and did meg get any of that coin???

I don't see how this can possibly be good for Denton, although it does confirm that megnut probably has the worst sense of timing in the industry.

I expect the first benefit will come from moving Blogspot to a healthy server farm, since this is one of the things Google really does best, and the next will be an excellent set of blog indexing features that will drive manyh more bloggers to that server farm.

But we'll see.

Any bets on if Google changes the Blogger name like the did for Deja? Bloogle anyone?

I doubt they'll change such a successful name. I doubt they'll favour Blogger over other blogging tools in PageRank. I'm sure happy they bought the company instead of having some AOL, Yahoo! or MSN buy it. I think they'll be successful both at selling Blogger to the public as a blogging tool and at selling a new, Google Intranet tool to companies. And, finally, I'm pretty confident news and articles from bloggers will soon pop-up among the resources available in Google News! :-)

Now for the real speculation:

Bloggle?
Gblogger?
Bloogle?

... or just plain "Blogger [powered by Google]"

the third one :-)

Google does also offer the Google Answers as a pay service model, though I don't know how successful it has been. I've used it on a few time-pressed occasions with varying results. eBay research - interesting concept, anyway.
There could be benefits to Google above and beyond a typical (if such a thing exists) weblog-tool-for-payment model. They are gaining first-party access to tens of thousands of weblogs, which could enable them to better analyse the way people write on the web - frequencies, language structures, the way people interact with UI, and what types of topics are written about most. It could become a treasure trove of metadata that allows Google to refine their search technologies further and help maintain industry leadership status.
Plus there are surely financial reasons for Google to diversify its holdings and do different types of R&D (if that is indeed what they have in mind.)

Theory: Google is not interested in taking on Movable Type, LiveJournal, etc. Google IS interested in taking on Blogdex, Daypop, etc....and perhaps CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post as well.

Ev estimates ~200,000 ACTIVE bloggers (out of 1.1 million registered users). We can presume that the association with the world's #1 search engine will increase those users (at least in the short-term).

Having the capacity to index those Google-Blogger blogs AS THEY POST (instead of having to spider the sites), gives them a jump on ranking the popular links...they can then direct the spiders more efficiently to check other non-Blogger blogs for the presumed high-ranking links. That could create a blog index that is more representative (time-wise) of the actual posts out there.

Also, Tony Pierce points out (http://www.tonypierce.com/blog/2003_02_16_blogarc.htm#90331511) that webloggers are getting better at breaking news -- or, more specifically, SPREADING news that just broke -- than other news sites. Having a significant percentage of webloggers "inside the firewall" may give Google the sampling they need to direct their news spiders and have Google News become the most up-to-date news source around (if it isn't already).

It seems to me like Blogger may give Google a way to get speedier on some non-webpage-search fronts.

At the risk of oversimplifying:

Blogger sucks. I tried it. I hated it: too many bugs, their servers were constantly down, their website had broken links, etc. I switched to MovableType.

Google rules. I tried it. I've never looked back.

What I'm wondering is not Blogger's impact on Google, but the other way around -- with Blogger's quality zoom light years ahead to the level of Google's user experience?

Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com

Well, I've used Blogger since March 2000 and, yes, there WERE intermittent downtimes in the beginning. But overall, I've been more than happy with Blogger. Their main obstacle has been creating an easy to use tool for folks who don't understand HTML, FTP and web hosting (this is probably Livejournal or Radio Userland's niche).

Ev and his crew rock. A LOT of dumb money was thrown around during the dot-com dayz. They deserve to make some cash off one of the truly innovative web applications out there.

For one thing, it is good that Google bought it - they can handle it better.

What I wonder is how does a search engine know something is a blog???

Okay, so let me get this straight. One minute Google is the well-loved, well-praised lovechild of the Internet. And the next minute, all respect is out the door for having bought out Blogger?

Who cares if this deal doesn't fall under Google mission statement? Like all solid businesses, Google probably identifies the need to evolve. United is now trying to focus on the low-fare market. Amazon went into apparel and restaurant menus. Orbitz is looking into hotel bookings.

And, now, Google wants to blog. Good for them for thinking outside the box.

Google + Blogger = Go_Ogle, the Mother of All Online Dating Sites

Here's how I think it will happen:

First, Google will improve the searchability of the "blogosphere" by making it easy for bloggers to append a file containing information about themselves and their blogger friends. This information will be encoded in an RDF dialect called FOAF (Friend of a Friend).

Soon after, it will start to dawn on people that the FOAF file is effectively a static online profile, while the associated blog is akin to a living profile (in the 'living document' sense).

One tipping (i.e. inflection) point later, usage of Google by date seekers will grow to an such extent that our (grand)children will read about it in their history texts. Online dating is at 26M users and growing, after all.

Google will then acquire the best RDF query toolmakers and launch Go_Ogle, the mother of all online dating sites.

Once Go_Ogle is in place, the possibilities are absolutely mind-googling :^)

More on this, including a pointer to foundational code for GPLed Go_Ogle, at www.opportunityservices.com.

Thoughts?

Enjoy,

Frank Ruscica

Founder
The Opportunity Services Group :: Have Fun to Get Ready
www.opportunityservices.com

I hope develop blog solution with Jsp and Mysql.
Please give me your teaching