Don’t Be (Too) Evil
DirectorBlue is the latest right-of-center Blogspot site to get axed by Google. Ed Driscoll adds:
When I first launched my blog in early 2002, I used Blogger’s templates and input system, as they were the easiest, fastest way to get started. But I quickly secured the Ed Driscoll.com domain name, in part because back then, Blogspot was unreliable as a hosting platform due to its frequent crashes.
Today, Blogspot is unreliable as a hosting service because your blog and years of archives can quickly disappear without a trace, and as Ann Althouse went through back in May, getting them restored can take hours and hours and ultimately days of valuable time. Especially when, as Althouse discovered, Google’s tech support surrogates bring the snark.
This is exactly my experience. I started VodkaPundit on January 10, 2002. Just three months later, I’d moved to VodkaPundit.com at my own expense, to spare myself all of Blogspot’s headaches.
Now I’m sparing myself from Google’s spiteful ways.
By the way: A couple weeks ago I changed my default search engine to Bing, and I don’t have any complaints. Something to think about for yourself.
UPDATE: DB is back online, without explanation from Google.
I use both Bing and Google. I find Google a little better in search. Microsoft or Google…which corporate overlord should I feed?
There’s also ask.com and dogpile.com
and http://www.goodsearch.com/ which gives donations to charities. Though it appears to be a template over yahoo.
If you’re getting your product for free, then you ARE the product.
Be careful with the Bing search engine. It is our default IE search engine where I work, and it appears to install a cookie from usa.gov. Of course, I remove it.