Blogging vs Google I
On light of the recent news that Google is buying Pyra, and with it Blogger, Blogspot and all that is associated with it, and the very sad news that Salon will be disappearing after February, I have a question: Is Google going to corner the market in hosting services for bloggers? There may be a huge migration from the Salon servers to other ones, and for those that can not afford or do not want the complications of their own domain, this seems a serendipitous alternative.
And of course, Bloogle (Will that be the new name? It is already taken) will have access to the 1.1 million bloggers already out there, and surely they will swamp services as weblogs.com or blo.gs with their pinging and updating, bring up the need for a more robust indexer of blogs – a clear opportunity for Google.
As Matt Webb is saying, they are building The Memex:
They've got one-to-one connections. Links. Now they've realised - like
Ted Nelson - that the fundamental unit of the web isn't the link, but
the trail. And the only place that's online is... weblogs.
When will Brin and friends start yielding to market pressures? Or, for that matter, to government subpoenas?
I have been reading the accusation of google as big brother, and the many qualms people have regarding their services as too intrusive, lacking in oversight and definitely too abusive of people's information. However, this latest excursion into people's voices leave me feeling a little wary of possible consequences.
The net would have to be, by definition, a distributed enterprise, a dynamic network constantly renewed and re-examined. Centralizing efforts of this nature leave a strange taste, when the content provider marries the referencer.
And all around the blogosphere, people are receiving this with awe and suspicion. First Deja, then the News, now the Blogs? What comes out of controlling 50% of the blogging made, to say nothing of the fact that what is in the Pyra machines will become immediately enmeshed with Google?
I will keep my MT, thank you. It is distributed, open, and I don't have to jump through hoops to get at my content.