Google Weblog

February 15, 2003: Google Buys Blogger

Dan Gillmor: Google Buys Pyra: Blogging Goes Big-Time. (Pyra is the companyy that runs Blogger.)

This seems rather atypical for Google; I wonder what they plan to do. One theory is that they want to monitor the update-stream. This doesn't make sense; surely they could get the update-stream if they asked nicely, everyone loves Google after all.

Evan Williams, Pyra founder: "Holy crap."
Jason Shellen, Pyra bizdev: "Well, looks like someone scooped us on our own story."
stevej, Pyra programmer: "[Dan Gillmor] knew before I did! So yeah; stevej@google.com"

Matt Webb has some interesting thoughts (more):

God that's it. GOOGLE ARE BUILDING THE MEMEX. [...] Imagine, searching at Google, and then:

Another thought: Google is apparently going to be hosting Blogger's free (ad-supported) BlogSpot blogs. So you can get ultra-reliable hosting (when was the last time you remember Google going down?) for free!

Cory Doctorow has a great essay on what this all means.

Posted by Aaron Swartz on February 15, 2003 10:15 PM