Mon, 3 May 2010

Blogger removed FTP support recently

Filed under: Bits and Bytes by Hari
Posted at 19:45 IST (last updated: Mon, 3 May 2010 @ 19:47 IST)
A random piece of news that I recently stumbled upon was the fact that Blogger recently removed their FTP support, essentially ending an era of "hosted" blogs (blogs which were generated through the Blogger.com service but served from the blog author's own hosting/server). This is just another reason why I am glad I never used their blogging service in the first place.

To be fair, google have provided a migration service for such users. However this news must be hard to take for all those people who have relied on Blogger's FTP service all these years. While the actual number of people who used the FTP service might be a miniscule fraction, I think that this just shows the arbitrariness of free services on the Internet and the implications of sudden policy changes on their part.

4 comment(s)

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  1. I tried to start some Blogger blogs, but the templating system has a lot to be desired. It works for people who don't enough about it yet, but I think people eventually move away because of the limitations. The sad part is that Google didn't improve it much after they acquired it from the previous company.

    Comment by RT Cunningham (visitor) on Mon, 3 May 2010 @ 22:53 IST #
  2. Blogger was always targetted at less technically inclined folk I guess. Most people who use Blogger aren't even likely to notice its limitations.

    Unfortunately I think with this move Google have successfully alienated even the 1% of tech-savvy folks who had continued using it.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, 4 May 2010 @ 08:03 IST #
  3. Every single Google "let's create" product has been malnourished and extremely limited. Google Blogger? Pfft. Joe can use it, but not for long. Google Sketchup? Seriously. It's a joke. Google sites ... I'm at a loss for words.

    Comment by Dion Moult (visitor) on Tue, 4 May 2010 @ 19:03 IST #
  4. True true, Dion. The problem is that the "average" Joe user is more interested in the publishing aspect rather than the technological limitations. Hence when google throws a bomb at them like this, they lose a lot of hard work in the process.

    Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Tue, 4 May 2010 @ 22:01 IST #

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