Boosting Blogs?

Or a step towards cybersegregation?

Have a look at this article about Google's new blogsearch beta, which is getting linked to by bloggers hither and yon.

A new Google Inc. specialty search engine sifts through the Internet's millions of frequently updated personal journals, a long-anticipated development expected to help propel "blogging" into the cultural mainstream....

The appearance of the new Google tool, which catalogs the latest blog postings by looking at the Web feeds they generate, also makes it more likely that two other tech powerhouses and fierce rivals, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., will develop a similar feature.

Microsoft's next operating system, Vista, is supposed to feature built-in tools for Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, and Atom – the two most widely used techniques for letting people subscribe to Web feeds to keep abreast of the latest postings on blogs and news sites.

"This sort of feels like 1995 when the Web was just starting to explode. Now it feels like the same thing is happening to blogging," said Bob Wyman, chief technical officer for PubSub, which offers a Web feed subscription service.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN already had been indexing blogs in their general search engines, but the broad approach reaps results that often buries blog links or points to outdated information.

By focusing exclusively on blog feeds, Google theoretically will be able to deliver fresher and more relevant results....

I'm not sure I believe this. I think that the real aim, ultimately, could be to segregate blogs out of more typical or standard information sources — that is, to make them, actually, less accessible to the casual Googler.

Why do I have this suspicion? Because of this statement: the broad approach reaps results that often buries blog links. I don't know about your experience, Faithful Reader, but my experience is exactly the opposite: searches are more likely to produce frequently updated weblogs at the beginning of the results list, rather than "bury" them. Don't you think? Moreover, "outdated information" can just as easily be found — if not more easily found — on websites that aren't blogs than on weblogs. No?

So, I am suspicious of the real purpose(s) because two of the supposed reasons ring untrue to me.

By cybersegregation, I mean the eventual filtering of blogs out of "plain" Google search results, so they will actually, really, truly be more difficult to find by the casual Googler. Now, why in the world would anybody want to do that?

Well, I feel rather sure that the fine liberal folks at Google simply couldn't stand it when searches for "John Kerry" & "1971 Senate Testimony" or "Swift Boat Veterans" (just to pick two searches at random) took users to blogs first rather than to, say, mainstream-media outlets that would much rather have had first crack at telling people what to think reporting on those interesting topics.

On the other hand, I'm not sure we should put much faith in a story written by somebody who thinks that weblogs ought to be described as "personal journals", "frequently updated" or not. I follow quite a few blogs every day — and I rather think you do, too, Faithful Reader — and not a one of them can be accurately described as a "personal journal".

(Thanks, Stephen.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 09/16/05 06:42:31 PM
Categorized as Media.