There has to be money in blogging for Google - in terms of exposure, advertising and even search (w/ Google blogsearch) so why doesn't Google invest more in Blogger? I can't figure it out. Blogging seems like a natural fit with what Google's doing these days - even with their main focus of search. Get more people using Blogger, which means Google has more of their hands in the content that bloggers produce. Blogger has the great ability of allowing me to FTP my content to another server (other than the blogspot service). I haven't found another blog software/service that does this, so it's already got some great and important features. But there are obvious other ones and obvious problems: 1. All the downtime: It has to stop. There's gotta be a way of fixing this. If their search engine died every couple of days, was sporadically slow enough that gray hairs are growing on my head while waiting, Google would be dead in the water. 2. Categories: I've read that it would require a fairly major re-write of Blogger. Well the entire software can't be that complex, and I know a million bloggers that would love categories (ok, technically I don't know a million bloggers, but you know what I mean.) 3. Developer Community: Google has to see the advantages of allowing developers to write plugins for Blogger and making them readily available (like WordPress). 4. More Automation of Linking, Page Creation, etc.: Again, I'll use WordPress as the example where you can create links and pages easily through WordPress. Considering Blogger is most often used by newer people to the blogosphere, you'd think they would want to make it as easy as possible to do some of the basic things (everyone creates blogrolls) and expand the functionality (separate permanent pages, etc.) I don't believe Google settles for "second best" in any arena; I just don't see that in their philosophy, although lately they've been releasing a lot of things (like Google Spreadsheet) which many people think are so-so and out the door a bit early. Bottomline, it seems to me like Blogger is not a priority, but considering how many people use it, the extra goodwill improving it would generate, and the way it seems (at least in my eyes) to fit nicely into the strategy they have ongoing (even if you think Google Office, having a strong blogging/publishing platform makes sense!) I'm quite surprised and frustrated by the lack of movement from them. (Now you could say - "well just switch" - which is true, but it's easier said than done in my particular circumstance; needing ASP and PHP hosting combined, having a 1-year hosting contract, not having the time to transfer everything, etc. And even if I did switch, my questions remain valid...) This post was inspired in part by Joe's post, More Blogger Problems. (Technorati Tags: google, blogger, google spreadsheet, google office, wordpress)