Will Blogger shut down? An in-depth analysis from the perspective of Google’s business operations

This article author Wayne Fu, the most in-depth research topic is Blogger, and also delved into many application experiences related to the network and cloud. Thank you for authorizing “Content Hacker” to reprint. Thank you hereby.

[Why we reprint this article] When talking about how to choose a blog platform in several content hacking lectures and reading groups, the usually recommended ones are Blogger and Medium. In fact, as long as you start writing and develop a huge fan base and form a fan economy, you can choose to set up a website at your own expense to retain traffic and say goodbye to the free blog platform.

Of course, even a giant company like Yahoo may become the target of acquisition. Of course, Google and Medium cannot issue a “no-suicide statement” and declare that they will never close. Wayne made an in-depth analysis of the status of the Blogger platform and its contribution to Google, and deduced the reasons why Google will not shut down Blogger, which is worth your reference.

Analyze Blogger from a business perspective

Users have long been worried about whether Blogger may go bankrupt. In the past, the author has expressed his views on “The Future of Blogger”, but some readers continued to ask the same questions after reading it for a while. I think unless there is an official statement, this doubt will never stop.

However, is it possible for Google to officially issue such a statement? I don’t think so. Even leading Internet companies like Yahoo will be eliminated due to poor management, and even Facebook cannot guarantee that it will not go bankrupt.

The survival of a company or product is predicated on whether there are substitutes and whether it can continue to make profits. So this article will discuss whether there will be alternatives to Blogger, and whether Google can make money from Blogger.

1. Simple judgment method

Let’s take a look at some simple methods first. We use the following 3 observations to determine whether Google will end Blogger.

1. Whether the system is continuously updated

Usually for a department that cannot see the future, the company will not be willing to continue to invest more resources, so stopping the service update will be a sign.

Basically, you can always see system updates in Blogger, such as the 2017 feature “[Blogger launches new adaptive RWD official templates and themes, and supports mobile devices] (http://www.wfublog.com/2017/03/blogger-rwd-official-template.html)”.

Although this method of observation is simple, it is troublesome. Webmasters are running out of time just to run their own websites, and they don’t have time to keep track of the news released by Blogger’s official website. Therefore, evaluating other factors will provide a clearer answer.

2. AdSense advertising revenue

Blogger can easily add AdSense advertising gadget from the backend to make money for your website. At the same time, Google will also take about one-third of the advertising revenue, which means that Blogger can bring a lot of revenue to Google.

3. No customer service expenses

As pointed out in the article “The Future of Blogger”, Blogger does not have a large customer service team or fixed costs such as homepage maintenance. Compared with other blog platforms, it is in an invincible position in terms of operating costs.

These are the advantages of Blogger mentioned before. But in fact, Blogger has some more important meanings for Google. Let us continue to look at it.

2. Why did Google shut down other services?

Google has launched a plethora of services, but the number of closures is not far behind. The relevant reasons are analyzed below.

1. No commercial value to Google

Google is a listed company, and its profit figures must be accountable to shareholders. So every year Google will definitely review which services are purely money-burning and have no profitability.

“Google Reader Closed” is the best example. Looking back, Google Reader is really a Buddhist service, but it is difficult to think of an effective business model for Google Reader.

However, this incident did create a shadow in the hearts of users, making most people fear that Blogger might also be shut down. But in fact Blogger has huge commercial value, which is completely different from Google Reader.

2. There are better alternatives on the market

The closure of the “Google Code” service that year also brought quite a shock. However, Google’s decision is indeed the right one.

I believe you have heard of “Github”. In recent years, Github has become the world’s largest open source code hosting platform, and Google Code has long been unable to compete. With such a powerful alternative, Google is indeed not suitable to continue investing resources.

3. Google engineers no longer need this feature

In fact, the services launched by many technology companies were originally based on the needs of their own engineers, and they were opened to the public for use. Since it is used by engineers, it must be regarded as an “expense” and “cost” for the company, and cannot be kept based entirely on commercial value assessment.

In 2016, Google launched a service “Spaces”, which has a function similar to a small discussion board. I believe that Spaces was created by some engineers within Google who had relevant needs, but at the time I didn’t think it was particularly useful.

Perhaps there were too many substitutes for this tool, and Google engineers later stopped using it. Now “Spaces official website” only has the word “closed” left, and it is not known how long it has survived.

3. Google-related services currently still in operation

This article does not intend to discuss services such as Google Maps, Gmail (which can be used commercially in GSuite to make money) and YouTube, which can make a lot of money, but purely to discuss Google services that do not seem to be able to directly generate revenue.

1. Google+

Google+ has been regarded as a “ghost town” for several years. The number of users is far less than that of Facebook, and there is no advertising revenue. Why hasn’t it been shut down yet?

In fact, Google+ is mostly used by foreign engineers and specific ethnic groups. Moreover, Google+ functions are much better than Facebook. If no one in Taiwan used it, WFU would not switch to Facebook.

Content published on Google+ can be easily searched and reused, while Facebook posts are like a boat passing through the water without leaving a trace, and knowledge cannot be recycled for a long time. I think the Google+ community will continue to exist as long as Google engineers find a replacement.

2. Google Drive

Google is not a company with a Buddhist heart, so why can Google Drive continue to provide powerful, free and non-profit-making tool services such as documents, spreadsheets and forms, and allow them to continue to exist?

For enterprise-charged “GSuite” services, you can choose to include or link the above services, making enterprises more productive when using “GSuite”.

Although services such as Google Drive cannot directly bring revenue, they can indirectly drive and increase the sales of “GSuite”. Therefore, these free services, in addition to being used by Google’s own engineers, also have huge commercial value.

3. Google Keep

Google Keep is also a service that obviously does not generate any revenue, and there is no charging mechanism. Because there are too many substitutes on the market, if you really charge a fee, no one will use it.

However, I believe that this tool was made by Google engineers based on their needs, so it is mainly based on internal needs. In addition, Google Keep can now be integrated into services such as Google documents and spreadsheets, which is equivalent to becoming an additional service of GSuite. It is also possible to say that it has commercial value.

4. Google Photos Google Photos Although there is a charging mechanism, it is really difficult to meet the charging standards. The uploaded pictures must be very large before they will be included in the quota capacity calculation.

Although most of us can’t see how Google Photos can actually make money, we can remember the following paragraphs:

• Google engineers are the best of the best.

• Services that can survive for a long time must have their core value for Google

• Google’s core services can collect a large amount of information and data for Google

• Google’s top talents have the means to analyze and dissect these big data and convert them into business value

• Even if ordinary companies get big data, they don’t know how to convert it into business value, or they lack the ability to effectively convert it. This is the difference with top companies.

Can you guess how the large amount of information we put in Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Photos will be converted and used by Google? This part is regarded as a secret of Google. I can’t say much more and can only click here.

5. Blogger

Now let’s look back at Blogger, what key points does his survival meet:

• Engineers required: Google’s various official websites are all hosted on Blogger. Without Blogger, each department would have to set up its own website and find its own image source to update or publish information.

*Are there any alternatives: Are there any other free blogging platforms currently comparable to Blogger? Google’s server quality, maintenance and Content Delivery Network (CDN) services are beyond the reach of other blogging platforms.

• Commercial value: Like other Google core services, how much information and data has Blogger directly or indirectly obtained for Google, and can it be converted into revenue?

4. How search engines make profits

In fact, Blogger can bring too much business value to Google. Let’s talk about search engines separately.

1. Google advertising revenue

Google started as a search engine, and its main revenue at the beginning came from selling advertisements, that is, AdWords.

In order to grab keywords, it is difficult for merchants to grab the first page by relying on natural rankings. Usually you can only buy ads with Google to get exposure on the first page of search.

Google sells ads through bidding. The more it wants to grab the top buyer, the higher the price it will charge. In a highly competitive industry, it is even more expensive. If a merchant wants to grab keywords during specific holidays and periods, they may have to pay a sky-high price to get them.

By creating a bidding atmosphere, AdWords’ profits in this area can be said to be Google’s golden goose.

2. Search engine competitors

In order for ad buyers to bid on Google instead of bidding on Yahoo or other competitors, Google must first create an environment like “I am the best search engine”:

• Fast indexing speed: Yahoo and Bing index website content so slowly that Google’s taillights can’t be seen from afar.

• A lot of indexed content: Yahoo and Bing cannot search for a lot of online information. After a long time, everyone knows to choose Google.

• Most used: Everyone uses Google to search in the end, and advertisers must ultimately choose to advertise on Google to ensure exposure.

3. Blogger’s contribution

Blogger provides a large amount of indexed content by Google, which means that Blogger has a large amount of high-quality content that will appear in Google search results. The impact of this is:

• Producing more quality content will crowd out first page search results

• As long as there are more websites that cannot squeeze into the first page and want to be exposed, there will be more potential advertising buyers for Google.

4. Impact of Blogger shutdown

So obviously, if Google gets stuck one day and decides to shut down Blogger, it will have the following consequences:

• Google instantly loses index content of all Blogger websites

• All other website rankings jumped instantly

• Some websites that could not reach the first page are now accessible.

• Potential ad buyers disappear

• Because there are fewer competitors, AdWords bidding amounts may not be so high.

• Google’s profit on AdWords dropped significantly

The above is a simple logical deduction, that is, if Google really dares to shut down Blogger, it will be difficult to present a beautiful financial report to shareholders.

Therefore, as the number of Blogger users increases day by day, the amount of indexed content will only increase rather than decrease, and Google will become increasingly reluctant to close Blogger.

5. Index of non-Blogger websites

Maybe there is still a slight possibility that Google will shut down Blogger. Anyway, if Blogger is shut down, these websites will find other places to set up their sites. In the long run, this content will be indexed by Google again some time after it is re-sited, right?

I think from Google’s perspective, it’s most beneficial to have the platform that provides content in your own hands:

• Google Indexing Robot crawls its own servers quickly and builds indexes quickly; crawling other people’s servers is slower.

• The HTML structure of the Blogger website will definitely be constructed in a way that facilitates the work of indexing robots, and will also be updated according to the latest standards, which is beneficial to SEO.

• The HTML structure of other platforms is different, and parsing and indexing will take more time. Not to mention that if you encounter an alternative platform like “Wix”, the content is dynamically generated using Javascirpt, which is a huge burden for the indexing robot.

• As long as Google makes free Blogger more convenient, more users will be willing to use Blogger as a content providing platform. This means that the easier the work of the indexing robot will be, the less the cost of the search engine will be, the faster and more Google will index, and the greater the distance between Google and other search engines will be.

Final judgment on Blogger’s survival

5. Summary

From the discussion above in this article, it is difficult to find out the reason why Google must shut down Blogger, and the more places Google needs to rely on Blogger, the more it will be discovered.

So, “Google Reader” and “Blogger” were compared by worried people at the beginning. Now please re-evaluate. Do you think the level difference between the two is too far?

Let’s draw conclusions:

• The more websites you build on Blogger, the easier it will be for Google’s search engine

• The more high-quality content Blogger can provide, the better it can maintain AdWords competitive bidding and profitability.

• As long as Google has the ability to analyze and convert the information and data collected from its various services into substantial benefits, there is no reason to close such free services, including Blogger.

★ Recommended reading:

• Remember the original intention of writing: find the joy of running a blog

• Speed up your blog, start by choosing plug-ins carefully

★ Picture source: Blogger, 699pic

★This article author Wayne Fu, the most in-depth research topic is Blogger, and also delved into many application experiences related to the Internet and cloud. Thank you for authorizing “Content Hacker” to reprint. Thank you hereby.

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