Google: Do Something Great with Blogger (Please)

Those who read the Bloke regularly know that I have a love/hate relationship with Google Blogger. For a company with such deep pockets I’ve often lamented that despite the fact Beta is just around the corner, Blogger still seems to be playing catchup with its competitors.

Today I noticed that Doc Searls has also entered the fray:

So here’s my question for the day. Why has Google improved Blogger so little since it bought the platform from Pyra in early 2003. In blog years, 2003 is somewhere back in the Triassic. Consider all the work Google has done with its mail and office services, with maps, with Google Earth… and so little to integrate any of those with Blogger. Why?

(Unless I have that wrong. Do I? You tell me. I’m not a Blogger user, except as a frustrated poster of comments. But I am an observer, and from this angle I’ve seen remarkably few improvements, considering, over the years.)

I suggest for Christmas that Blogger users give Google positive and useful suggestions for making Blogger a leading blogging platform, for integrating it better with the rest of the Web, and for making it add to Google’s otherwise well-deserved reputation as a builder of ground-breaking apps and services.

I’m with you there Doc, but he also opines:

My own first suggestion is to open-source Blogger’s code and bring back “pro” accounts to make Blogger a paid service. The charge doesn’t need to be much — maybe $25 or $35 a year. Like what TypePad charges. Or Flickr. But enough to turn users into customers and to have a real market relationship with its most serious bloggers — and not just with advertisers, which is what Google has now.

Only if they agree to everything in the Bloke’s wish list. Otherwise, Wordpress here I come.

Thanks for trying to help Doc but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve been waiting a long time for Google to do something great with Blogger, but it’s beginning to look like my patience has been all in vain.

These days the only good thing that I can say about Blogger is it has a thriving community of hackers that make it (most) everything that it ought to have been.