16 Feb 2003 | Mathew said...

Hey, it's not *just* a fax machine, it is also a printer, copier and flat-bed scanner! How can bloogle compete with that?

17 Feb 2003 | owen said...

long live google!

17 Feb 2003 | fajalar said...

On a related interface note: Amazon Light 2.0b is up and running.

17 Feb 2003 | Alan Taylor said...

Thanks for the mention fajalar - I sent email to JF on here a few days ago, soliciting feedback on Amazon Light 2.0, please fire away. ( Or, maybe I'll have to acquire something of import before enough notice is taken. I've been eyeing a new electric razor lately... Hmmm )

17 Feb 2003 | Bill Brown said...

I don't get why Google would do this.

It seems like it wouldn't get them any benefit that they couldn't already get. For example, both DayPop and BlogDex offer blog searching and blog aggregation.

It also seems like a conflict of interest for Google since they have thus strenuously avoided any aspect of content creation and focused exclusively on content acquisition and presentation.

17 Feb 2003 | James said...

I think the idea is not to focus so much on the individual blogger, but on using blogger as base for a corporate blogging platform combined with the google search appliance. A secure, company exclusive blog intranet with unbeatable search. Bow down before it's might I tell you!

18 Feb 2003 | ~bc said...

James has it exactly right. Imagine the knowledge base a company could aquire, and then effectively sort through, if all the employees blogged. "Today I had this heck of a tech support call, something I hadn't seen before, but I found this way to solve it, and the customer was so happy."

or

"I was experimenting swapping this piece which we normally make from steel, with a piece I made from carbon, which increased it's stiffness right where we wanted it."

And then when another employee needs information like that, even if the originator has left the company, their experience is still easily accessible.

18 Feb 2003 | SU said...

Search Engine Watch has some interesting thoughts on the Google/Pyra combination:

We've already seen Google experimenting with letting you see what the web "says" about pages, through its experimental "Webquotes" project available in Google Labs. Weblog postings could be a natural way to enhance these "quotes," potentially improving search results.

It's an interesting idea, using blogs as human filters on a grand scale. Bringing them into the Google fold effectively reduces the spidering lag to zero -- Google will, in a way, have its finger on the pulse of the most grassroots of media outlets.

19 Feb 2003 | jc said...

I don't think Google bought Pyra to add a revenue stream. And it's not just the content they're after. I'd agree with SU that what Google just bought was direct access to a couple hundred thousand free editors who are actively viewing and contextualizing web pages everyday, each in their own little niche. It's not what the bloggers are linking to, but the frequency of their updates, the number/volume of their updates, and the traffic they get to their websites. Active, prolific bloggers might have more relevance in the web community and their links may, in the end, be worth more than a normal link.

21 Feb 2003 | Jonny Roader said...

"Active, prolific bloggers might have more relevance in the web community and their links may, in the end, be worth more than a normal link."

I wouldn't trust the links gleaned from most bloggers, never mind the 'prolific' ones, unless Google have developed a pretty powerful 'anti-incestuous linking', 'non-disappearing-up-own-arse' ranking algorithm.