February 16, 2003
Blogger and Google, a great match
Congratulations Evan! Of course, the news broke on a blog, while Evan was speaking on a panel about blogging.
I think Google is a great home for Blogger, and Blogger's simplicity matches Google's design philosophy. I've been totally impressed with Google's business and technology moves. Google's mission isn't just search, it's to "organize�the�world's�information�and make�it�universally�accessible�and�useful", which they've been doing through search initially, then with discussion groups and more recently news feeds. Marissa Mayer did a great presentation recently about the How and Why of Google UI at Terry Winograd's seminar on People, Computers, and Design.
The two main ways I find information on the internet today is by searching and reading blogs—blogs are another view into the world's information and we're just starting to understand how we can best visualize the connections across blogs and track relevant information as it's happening, whether it's through DayPop, Technorati, blogdex, or maybe something along the lines of power curves. Blogs provide the serendipity that is largely missing from search, while also providing the consistency of a single, current stream of thinking from a variety of points of view.
I look forward to the innovation that will come from the Blogger team joining the Google team! Of course, there is still a lot of innovation happening outside Blogger as well, with MovableType (which I'm using here), Radio, LiveJournal and others—we're still in the early days of microcontent, blogging, and continuing to explore the two-way web!
Comments
Marc Canter says:
anand says:
I personally am looking forward to what those google PhDs will conjure up when they start working on blogger. For too long the web has been single dimensional. Trackback showed us there is more to a link. I am waiting for google to show me what more can be done.
Kevin Lynch says:
Cool Marc -- yes, hope this does indicate the beginning of reinvestment from venture capital. I imagine enteprise might still continue -- Google does have an enterprise product (that comes in a cool yellow server box).
Yes, link tracking should be much better with these together -- apparently that sort of conversation/annotation tracking is what the Google team initially started out to do, and they ended up with a search engine as a side effect of that effort!
Frank Ruscica says:
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
Gerald says:
One of my first ideas has been "smart advertising", and that's what happend first ;-) Now, the next step should be to integrate blogger into googles architecture, hopefully resulting in fast and "stable" blogs. Not until having made significant improvements to the blog-functionality they should think about search engine optimisation ;-)
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Right on brother. I can't wait to see the continuing evolution of Macromedia and who Jeremy funds. These are exciting times and hopefully this Blogger deal will start to unlock some of those billions of dollars of unspent VC money.
I guess they've given up on funding enterprise - huh?