2014-06-19

Fear of the Blogger.com Death

Is Blogger going away?
The problems are many: Photos won't be recognized when linking to Google+, no new features forever, bad Google score (honestly is there any way left to get a good score with Blogger?).
I ask myself if +Google wants to let +Blogger die in favor of Google+ ?

The problem with the photo e.g. persists until the redesign before the latest update. That's quite some month now. If you post am article from your Blogger blog, in most cases it doesn't recognize the pictures from your post, even when they are normally uploaded with your post and on Picasa/Google+ photos.
I could not find the reason why. It seems random. Maybe a matter of the theme? I tried different themes. No matter which, sometimes it seems to work, sometimes not. Even trying 20 times, no change. Next post may work. So for me, Blogger is incompatible with Google+ again. That is a big downturn. Let's be honest, nobody looks at a link without a fancy photo :). And it's mandatory to give your link at Google+ a good look.

But that is only one aspect. Others are, no new design for a long period. Dynamic themes has hiccups. Recently some of the mobile themes stopped working. My articles were not visible on phones or tablets. So I changed to a complete different mobile design, which has nothing to do with my blog theme. Sad. And nobody at the company seems to care apparently, that recent updates broke their own product.

Yes, there should be the articles. But there is nothing.
Only the background is visible.
I assume that Google wants Blogger to go away and go with Google+, or they just don't care anymore.
Please, stop this. Google+ is no blogging platform, and it never will be.

Edit: The above are no "arguments". It's why I fear the abandoning of Blogger.com. No support anymore, no updates anymore, Themes are partly malfunctioning, (NOT altered like someone on Google+ is saying and trying to brush these concerns away), "Custom mobile themes" (not manually altered), are not working for some themes. It's a bloody mess at Blogger.com and no one seem to care. The official community is dead, Blogger Buzz abandoned some time ago (last post about "Pages" from 02/2014, prior post from December 2013). Even the Blogger Team moved to Google+ as it seems. And even there not much going on. Today, in July 2014, last post is from May 2014. These are no arguments, these are FACTS. Maybe the people didn't learn from the Google Reader death. Oh and Google Wave, and ...

Edit² (2014-07-06): Another worrisome thing is the Blogger mobile app for Android. Not updated for a long time, missing out basic features. The most important use scenario today is not even nearly in the game: Mobile. Recent abandoning of Orkut (still very big in Brasil) also doesn't help to think Blogger is safe.
Today, as of today July 7th 2014, the official blogger Android app was updated in November 2013 the last time. If that doesn't tell a story...