Google buys Blogger
: The news is out: Google buys Pyra, parents of Blogger and Blogspot.
Full disclosure: I got my company to invest in Pyra (after Nick Denton introduced us). I’ve been the cat that swallowed the canary with this news for awhile now. But now the cat and the canary are out of the bag.
This is good news for all, I think.
For Blogger and Blogspot users: It means that a nuclear-powered engineering department will now be running the software and servers. Imagine a world where Blogger is reliable and has the resources to develop as well. Thought it was a dream? Perhaps not.
For Google: The company is already blogsmart and will get even smarter. Because Google values links above all, blogs have influence disproporationate to their traffic (see also the power law discussion below). But Google needs to get smarter about how it interprets and uses those links and having Blogger inhouse should help, as Denton points out. I also believe that Google is too smart to favor Blogger blogs just because they’re in the family; Google must maintain the credibility of its rankings — its version of media church and state — to remain valuable to its users.
For bloggers as a whole: Again, the smarter Google is about weblogs the better it will be for us; our influence will grow and grow smartly. And it means people will sit up and pay attention to the weblog thing (be prepared for another spate of stories wondering, What the hell is a “blog”?).
For Google’s founders: Evan Williams gets a job and resources and stops being a sysadmin and customer service guy. Other founders get a nanoshare of Google (I’d take that!).
For investors: These days, it’s good news when your Internet investments are still breathing (and I’m proud to say that all the investments I brought in are); it’s better news when one of them gets bought and its’ good for all of us when an early Internet investment pays off. (Thought that, too, was a dream? Perhaps not.)
Good news, all around.
Protest photos
