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?"

it's still in beta

Give it another few years for Google to make it perfect, like everything they do

Re:it's still in beta

Google is the Neal Stephenson of companies. Promising starts, interesting ideas, and a chronic failure to finish.

Re:it's still in beta

Promising starts, interesting ideas, and a chronic failure to finish.

That's funny, I had a girlfriend that made the same comparison with me.

Re:it's still in beta

This is slashdot, what makes you think he ever had more than 1 girlfriend?

If Google is neglecting Blogger....

Then why are all the people still using it regardless?

It's not as if the other mentioned services (such as Wordpress) don't have free alternatives.
If you're serious about it all, you would buy your own domain, and use (and customize) any CMS to your liking.

I find it very funny to see these complaints (definitely "They've been neglecting it for years" ; Then why are you still blogging on there?

Re:If Google is neglecting Blogger....

Blogger is not without utility. However, a bit of a "feature War" has sprung up between it and Wordpress, and Wordpress's abilities have expanded far beyond that of Blogger's.

Google hasn't been neglecting Blogger so much as Blogger has been getting PWNED by faster-developing companies who can roll out more / better features faster.

Re:If Google is neglecting Blogger....

I would hope that Wordpress and other are ahead of Blogger on features. If you only do one thing, you had better do it very very well, especially if you have an option to charge people for its use. I have no desire to pay for the privilege of blogging and I'm not obsessed about how many readers I have (nor do I expect to ever make any money doing it), so Blogger is a good fit for me. If any of those three factors were different, I'd probably pick something else, including the possibility of renting a server and hacking together something totally unique.

Given their money, with fairly little effort I think Google could put Wordpress and other specialty blog programs out of business. Unlike Microsoft, I don't think part of Google's mindset is eliminating all competitors everywhere. A good example of that was the recent Campfire fiasco, where Google threw together a quick and dirty application example that was almost identical to a for-pay product from another company. The other company complained, Google nixed the example product (in this case as the function was so trivial, without a lot of bells and whistles, I don't think they should have).

Re:If Google is neglecting Blogger....

Blogger is still sufficient for small time blogs to keep friends and family up to date (I plan to use one when I go travelling later this year).

It is still far nicer than a lot of the free blogs I have been forced to visit by friends who have gone overseas and signed up with a dedicated travel site, in which the page is FULL of ads, hard to navigate, no RSS and frankly a pain on the eyes with the tropical island colour themes.

usenet spam from gmail accounts

On a related topic, the usenet groups I subscribe to are getting a ridiculous amount of spam recently from gmail accounts. On a given day, you'll get, say, 10 new posts, each with its own distinct subject line, trying to sell watches or running shoes. They're all from the same gmail account. It doesn't do you any good to plonk that gmail account, because the next day it's 10 new spams from some new gmail account. It's gotten to the point where I'm considering just filtering out all posts that come from gmail accounts. I'm guessing this is happening because google has relaxed their conditions for getting a gmail account, and at the same time the spammers are getting more sophisticated about solving captchas. The impression I get is that google is starting to feel the need to grow into their ridiculously large market capitalization, and they can only do that by bringing in lots of new users. If that means letting in lots of spambots too, well ...

Re:usenet spam from gmail accounts

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.

Re:usenet spam from gmail accounts

that was like eight or nine years ago.

September 1993. Forever and ever.

Re:usenet spam from gmail accounts

It's had its ups and downs since then with respect to the volume of spam. (Thanks to Google, the present timeframe is definitely one of the "downs".) But yeah, Usenet is still around, and it's not going away any time soon.

Many programming and other technology-related groups are still very active. Usenet is one of the best places to go for advice on the C programming language (comp.lang.c), information about PICs (sci.electronics.design), Linux advice (comp.os.linux.misc), or even cooking tips (rec.food.cooking).

Usenet has its weaknesses, but it also has some unique strengths versus Web-based discussion forums: everything is organized (more or less) hierarchically; the user interface is whatever you want it to be; and it's easy to download and archive interesting posts. These features appeal to enough people, apparently, to keep it going...

Blogger is fine...

Its audience are the masses, and for those it's a very easy to use and convenient tool. If you need pro features, because your blog is so sophisticated, choose a pro service provider instead and stop whining! Sounds like targeted fud. Why else would one cite a six year old story about a "security flaw"?

General problem of spam with Google/Gmail

Below is a general suggestion, but it is directly relevant to one of the main problems with Google's neglect of Blogger--several weeks ago (and several times in the past), the spammers have used Blogger as their reply channel for spam. Remember that the motivation of spamming is economic, and they need some way for their suckers to find them and send money. The suggestion below would be directly helpful in accelerating the response to this form of Blogger abuse--though it also applies to many other neglected systems that would more quickly receive the negative attention they deserve when they are abused by spammers.

Summary of Suggestion: How to make Gmail the spam target of absolute last resort.

The goal of this suggestion is to intelligently leverage and focus Google's expertise and credibility against the spammers and their accomplices. But where will the intelligence come from? From me, from you, from *ANYONE* who has a Gmail account and who wants to help oppose the annoying evil that is spam. Aggressively implemented, it could make Gmail into Spammer Heck--maybe to the point where only a fool would send spam to Gmail. (Yeah, there are plenty of fool spammers--but at least we'd get the laughs without the serious spammers.) Less spam = more value in Gmail.

So do you want to fight against spam? You, too, could become a WSF (wannabee spam fighter).

SpamSlam is my 'working draft' label. The idea is roughly based on other anti-spam systems--but with more smarts. Almost all email systems include one level of feedback in a Spam/NotSpam button. (For relative brevity and because it simplifies the draft implementation, I'm focusing on Web-based email here.) Think of SpamSlam as a report-spam-button on steroids. SpamSlam would report the spam, but also do much more. Essentially this Gmail feature would do some of the automatic analysis that any spam fighter has to do, get some intelligent feedback, and hopefully be able to act immediately against the spammer. Speed of action is actually crucial--cutting off the spammers' income is a key goal of this proposal.

Here is an approach to implementing it:

Clicking on SpamSlam would first trigger a low-cost automatic analysis of the email, including the headers. Let's call this Pass 0. Basically this is just using regular expressions to find things like email addresses, URLs, and phone numbers. The results would be used to generate a Pass 0 webform with comments and options (and explanations and links). This pass should also look for obfuscation and ask the wannabe spam fighter (WSF) to help break the spammers' attempts to evade the spam filters. (This is leveraging the spam's features against the spam--if a human can't figure out the spam, then the human can't send money to the spammer.) In many cases, this Pass 0 analysis may be able to suggest answers. If something like "[e-mail]" appears in the header, then the WSF should just click the option 'fake email'. Perhaps the WSF would only need to click a check box to confirm that "V/1/A/6/R/A" is a drug and categorize the spam. Other times the WSF can actually type in the answer to the spammer's quasi-CAPTCHA, and then the SpamSlam function can do something. At the bottom of the 'exploded email' in Pass 0, there will be the usual submit button.

After the WSF submits that Pass 0 form, more analysis can begin. The data is no longer raw, but partly analyzed, and the system can start checking domains, registrars, relays, fancier types of header forgery, MX records, categories of crime, email routings, and even things like countries hosting the spammer. This kind of analysis will probably take a bit of time, but a new Pass 1 form will be prepared for the WSF to consider. Basically, this would mostly be a confirmation step for the obvious counteractions. That's stuff like complaining to identified senders and webhosts, but also things like reporting open relays and spambots. It also needs more flexibility and 'other' options in the responses at this point--we all know the spammers are cons

Holy crap!

A blogger is upset about some software that allows them to blog?!

Batten down the handles - this teacup's in for a stormy night!

G-Integration

I have had a Blogger page for some time and always found it odd how poorly the integration was between blogger and other Google services was. For example, I wanted to add Adsense ads to my blog. I found there was a handy 'adsense' element that I could add so I gave it a try. But it was so limited (minimal formatting available, inability to center the ads) I just ended up using the generic 'javascript' element and pasting my own code.

Google is neglecting more than just blogger

IMO they are also neglecting Picasa, especially the Picasaweb. Adobe and Flickr are doing a much better job of updating their online photo sharing sites. What about Google Finance, Google Talk, and even Google Docs. All things that seen to be lagging in development.

You Get What You Think You Pay For

> Is Blogger destined to be a sideshow...?

Could well be. I'd demand a refund.

There are plenty of examples of other companies that are behind the curve in some respect or another. In most cases people do the rational thing -- they vote with their feet. Er, fingers. So why is this a story? Because it's Google.

People tend to tip over the tallest ivory towers, and shorter ones get left alone. This tendency is so strong that people fail to recognize when they're complaining about something that's not only free, but intended to be a billboard for their host's advertising, something which in other situations would be the focus of their complaints.

Mark my prophecy: Someday some company is going to produce a desktop Linux so good that it's going to catch on and become if not a major competitor in the OS market, then at least the major distro of Linux. And they will suffer the same fate, becoming the punching bag of the Linux community, while lesser distros have no fewer problems and gather fewer complaints. And of those complaining, many will have obtained the free version of the distro. They will be out nothing, but will feel somehow justified because of the stature of their target, and will do so with gusto despite the fact that equally good distros are available to which they could switch. This irrationality will escape them, as it does the author of TFA.

The nature of the beast here is cognitive dissonance and perceived value. Biggest gets equated with best. Best carries the same weight as monetary investment, in that it's a perceived value, the association with the biggest name being the source of that. But when there is no actual investment the fact of the lack of actual investment fact starts to come to mind. The contradiction produces cognitive dissonance. To suppress that, the complaining becomes more vehement in this situation than in equally problematic situations with products or services of less perceived value garnering fewer complaints. So strong is this tendency that even when there is actual value in terms of money spent, the amount of complaints is out of proportion with the number of problems compared to other products or services that can even cost less or nothing.

Evidence to support the above assertion? Simple: it continues to occur even when those suffering from the contradiction are made aware of it. Even when told they are wearing Don Quixote's hat, they will still tilt at that largest windmill. Just watch.

Re:You Get What You Think You Pay For

Mark my prophecy: Someday some company is going to produce a desktop Linux so good that it's going to catch on and become if not a major competitor in the OS market, then at least the major distro of Linux. And they will suffer the same fate, becoming the punching bag of the Linux community, while lesser distros have no fewer problems and gather fewer complaints. And of those complaining, many will have obtained the free version of the distro. They will be out nothing, but will feel somehow justified because of the stature of their target, and will do so with gusto despite the fact that equally good distros are available to which they could switch. This irrationality will escape them, as it does the author of TFA.

Post hoc predictions earn no points, at least if you're just looking at competition among Linux distributions. Remember Red Hat Linux? I was inside the E-Trade offices the day of the Red Hat IPO, and the people I was there with and I were just staring at the TVs watching it rocket up and up and up, and we were all exstatic that maybe now the time had come for "real" computing to get out there and put the smackdown on Microsoft. It was the darling for a bit, then the floodgates of criticism opened from all quarters in the Linux community about issues with RHL, both technical and political, and they were pulled down from that perch in short order thanks to a fractured community it had lost support from. I saw people going berserk over Red Hat's adoption of Gnome over KDE, even some people claiming that it was anti-Europe bias, as one example of how Red Hat, in short order, could do no right.

Fast forward to today, and Ubuntu is making huge strides in usability and popularity, introducing Linux into more homes and onto more desks than any other Linux distribution yet released. Coincident with that is a rising hue and cry against it from many corners, for being too simplistic and taking options away form the users, for cutting too many corners, for making it easier to install proprietary software like Nvidia's drivers, and other such complaints. It gets derided as candy-coated Linux that coddles stupid people.

The future is now, and was not too long ago as well, I guess.

Its simple

Google will just acquire some other company that already developed all these new Blog features and then just implement them into their own. Same goes with the Captcha security issue.

other things neglected too

Blogger is odd. It was one the first things out of beta but curiously felt (to me anyway) more beta than many of the other products still in beta. It still does. It's seriously lagging behind Wordpress in most everything.

However, in the face of little to no competition, the biggest area of neglect-concern is that of Search. It's far from perfect. In fact becoming less so with time due to the ever-higher number of people figuring out new ways to game Google search. Does it really take another couple of guys working in a garage somewhere to come up with the new search paradigm -- or could Google develop it themselves if they concentrated on their core business, and left blogging etc to others who specialize?

Google seriously needs competition - it's good for everyone, including Google.

Of course. Where's the revenue?

Google offers a number of services that don't make money. Why should they put more effort into them?

Even ads on the "Google Content Network" aren't worth much to actual advertisers. There's a class action lawsuit against Google [searchenginewatch.com] over this. AdWords customers are complaining that it's hard to opt out of running, and paying for, ads on the "Google Content Network". Ads on search result pages are valuable, but there's a growing opinion, backed up by ROI measurements, that putting vaguely relevant ads on random sites is just a money drain on advertisers.

Here's a step by step guide [searchenginewatch.com] to what you have to do, as an AdWords customer, to turn off the running of your ads on the "Google Content Network". (After you've finished the setup phase, during which you're not offered an opportunity to opt out, click on "Edit Campaign Settings" and un-check the "Content Network" box).

For Google, Blogger is just a way to generate cheap pages for the "Google Content Network".

Works for me

Blogger is easy. It allows Javascript (unlike Wordpress). Its newest templates are pathetically easy to set up--maybe two minutes. Automatic RSS feed built in. I have a standing offer to help newbies set up a blog. I'll set it up, populate it with appropriate widgets, make them an author and even an admin, and butt out of their lives. I can stick a blog roll on there in 30 seconds flat. If they want something else, they just email me. Google allows me as many blogs as I want. I know it sounds impossible, but some people can't do it. I use blogger because it really takes no time at all, but the newbie thinks I'm God. So what else is new? It doesn't do everything, but it doesn't NEED to. Remember the saying: Good, fast, cheap. Pick any two. Well, blogger is fast and cheap. And frankly, I think it is pretty good, too. I know it's not as good as vi, but Hey! Some of us have a life--and a girlfriend.

Re:Google does seem to have NIHS

Not Invented Here Syndrome. YouTube is still a fairly new purchase, so it's hard to tell what'll happen there, but we've heard similar complaints about other things they've purchased like GrandCentral, Dodgeball, Jaiku, JotSpot, Urchin, etc.

You do know that Google Maps and Google Earth, two of their most popular non-search products were the result of acquisitions, right?

Sites

Actually, Google has something much better than Pages, namely Google Sites. Unfortunately, you only get it with Google Apps, and you still get Pages for your domain's home page.

I think they should scrap Pages, replace it with Sites, and add subversion access, like they do with the Code Wiki.

Speaking of the Code Wiki, that should probably also be replaced with Google Sites...