Buh Bye Blogger!

You would think that blogging software owned and operated by Google would be the default standard for the blogging community. You’d be wrong. Simply put, blogger has less features, poorer SEO, and even worse in-sight search than WordPress. It’s shocking but WordPress just blows away blogger.

So with that in mind, welcome to the new Blogation. You’ll quickly see that the in-sight search functionality works, as do the categories, and the overall usability is much better. Oh, and you can type blogation.net or http://www.blogation.net, or even http://www.blogation.net and *all* of them will work!

I’ll be playing with the design over the coming weeks, and I’ve got to figure out the RSS feed migration as well. If you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, let me know!

 

Grading Google’s Goods

Man does Google have a lot of products. From mapping the surface of Mars to selling radio ads, Google is everywhere. And with the stock price currently hovering around $515, I guess all of these products that they keep rolling out must driving a lot of revenue, right? Well, some do, but others can only be classified as fun engineering projects that are a long ways away from every generating a cent for the Big G.

I figured it would be fun to grade Google’s various products and services on two factors – first, the current revenue they bring in, and second, the potential for revenue in the future. The scores from both of these factors will then be combined to give each product one overall grade.

For the record, I’m not grading on a curve, and due to the shear number of products Google offers, I’m not even going to justify any of my grades! That being said, if you really want to know the explanation for a grade, wait until after class and then write a comment to this blog.

So, without further ado, Blogation’s Google Grades (Grades are ordered as followed – current, future, overall):

Valedictorians:
AdSense: A, B+, A-
AdWords: A+, A+, A+
Blogger: A-, A-, A-
Domain Park: A, B+, A-
Gmail: A-, A, A
Toolbar: A, A, A

Dean’s List:
Analytics: B+, B+, B+
Base: C, B+, B
Checkout: B, A-, B+
Enterprise Search: B, B, B
Finance: B-, B, B
iGoogle: C, B-, B-
Maps: B, A-, B+
PageCreator: C-, A, B+
Talk: B, B+, B+

Extra Study Hall Time Needed
Adwords Audio: C, C+, C+
Calendar: C, C+, C+
Desktop: C-, B-, C+
Docs & Spreadsheets: C, B-, C+
Earth: B-, C+, C+
Groups: C, C, C
PPA: D, C, C-
Picassa: C-, C+, C
News: D-, C, C-

Detention
AdWords Print: D-, D-, D-
Orkut: D, D-, D-
Web Accelerator: D, D-, D

Overall GPA: 2.65 (C+)

C+ sounds pretty harsh (OK, fine, I’ll give them a C++) but remember that this is the overall score – Google’s great products are brought down by the struggling class clowns.