Google, Desperate to Save Money, Starts Mass-Deleting People's Blogs (That It Bought From Another Company Over 20 Years Ago)
Like Geocities under Yahoo! (after Microsoft had attacked Yahoo!)
"Google, the world's most-used internet search engine, yesterday announced the acquisition of Blogger [Pyra Labs], a web service which has fuelled the rapid rise of the web journals popularly known as weblogs." --18 February 2003, by Neil McIntosh
THIS is the holiday present that Schade got: "pack up your things and get out! We're closing down your blog!"
Are "old" (or inactive) blogspot blogs and YouTube channels next? Very possibly, it all began when they said "old" accounts (such as GMail) would be purged, spinning that as a matter of "security" rather than stinginess. Google is not a charity or even a free(mium) service; it'll cut whatever it takes, even Google News, to satisfy its profit motive (shareholders). Wait till they shut down things that are neither old nor inactive. Maybe they will look for new ways to charge YouTube "creators" and "views" for usage. WordPress.com, which absorbed MSN Space from Microsoft, already seems to be heading in this direction.
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Fiscally healthy companies do not resort to this. It seems like Automattic is looking for some new ways to 'monetise' what it has. Will it pull the plug on non-paying bloggers one day? It already imposed ads on them. It wasn't always like this.
Merry Christmas, peasants "Bloggers" (Blogger bloggers), said Google, an Alphabet agency.
YouTube may be next, as we said this past summer (many times in fact). No company hired as many Microsofters as the "don't be evil" company, so forget about that old motto/slogan.
Again: Google is not your friend.
Google does not value people's personal data and work (like their blogs which they devoted a lot of time to); all it cares about is money. And it couldn't possibly cost much money to keep Blogger going (maybe one competent engineer alone could manage all that if properly equipped). █