It's been a busy Sunday in the blogosphere, indeed. Just when I thought I could put this splog thread behind me, I caught this entry by an old friend (and I hope current one), Evan Williams – the original rock star of Blogger.com. I sent him the following email in response to his post, since I couldn't add a comment directly to it…
Killing Blogspot was a “Modest Proposal.”
My biggest beef is that Google didn't move to fix this problem earlier. Why did it take digital fist-shaking, in a *VERY* uncoordinated manner, to wake them up?
Even if splogs are a fraction of the traffic that comes from Blogspot, it's still sucking up Blogspot mindshare. I'm not scientific in my measurements – but it certainly *feels* like 99% when Blogspot is everywhere I don't want it to be. Or, to put it another way, 99% of the blogspot.com domains *I* see are from spammers. Dramatic, and certainly overstated – but do my non-scientific numbers dismiss the growing magnitude of this issue?
This thread has been a long-time coming, and Google had every ability to stop the problem before last night. “Apparently?” No, the correct word in this situation is “blatantly.” “Apparently” would have been the appropriate word to use if the first Blogspot spam started to show up last night. I'm not an alarmist, by any stretch of the imagination – nor are the others who have previously, concurrently, and subsequently commented on the problem. If you're trying to be humorous about it, I'm not sure this situation calls for levity?
You might remember that I was a registered (read: paid) Blogger Pro user long before you sold it to Google. The last thing I'd want to see is that entire resource eliminated, because I know it serves a great deal of good. However, the scales have started to tip in the other direction – and have been tipping that way for quite some time.
I love Google. I love Blogger. What I don't love is how Google hasn't done anything about the Blogspot problem. They've known about it – MANY of us have known about it. That, however, doesn't excuse those responsible for this situation. I don't wanna follow the money trail; I don't wanna believe that Google would do anything to harm the Internet if it would make their shareholders happy.
Bottom line: Google screwed up, and “we” finally called 'em on it. I'll continue to keep Google as my default search engine, I'll continue to deploy Google AdSense, I'll continue to use Picasa, I'll continue to *RECOMMEND* Blogspot for certain types of bloggers… but that won't keep me from crying foul when I feel that something's not right. And I'm *NOT* alone.
I don't want babies to get thrown out with the bathwater, or I wouldn't have offered a possible solution in my original entry. We obviously have Google's true attention now, and that should see us through to a practical and permanent fix. We all love Google – we really do. We also love what Blogspot has to offer people and the greater blogosphere – but not blindly. I'm confident the right people will do more than apply a temporary band-aid to the Splogspot situation.