As Google’s popularity rose exponentially, it was quickly recognized as one of the Internet search engine powerhouses. Google took a look at Blogger and noticed that there was a lot of power to be had through such a media platform. Google decided to make an offer to Pyra Labs for the purchase of the Blogger platform in 2003 and they accepted. Not only was Google a powerful brand name before the purchase of the Blogger platform, its popularity increased even more now that it offered a blogging platform backed by their resources.
Shortly after Google acquired the Blogger platform, the number of users went from hundreds of thousands to millions. This meant millions more customers being exposed to Google advertisements and other Google marketing tools. The money came flooding in. The Blogger platform is seen as one of Google’s first major acquisitions on the Internet and it helped Google to become the powerful force we see today.
With extra money flowing into Google, bloggers already using the Blogger platform enjoyed new applications, site redesigns and upgrades that made the already user-friendly blogging software just that much easier to navigate. This very thing helped Blogger maintain a competitive edge amongst the other blogging platforms out there and launched it into the next generation of blogging where it maintains its position as the leading, free blogging software on the Internet.
With Google now being the power behind the blogging machine that is Blogger, Blogger users now had many Google resources at hand to use in conjunction with their blogging efforts. Advertising through Google, embedding videos and publishing content on a blog from a mobile phone are just a few of the many resources provided by Google that became much easier for a blogger to incorporate into their Google supported blog.
Below are just some of the convenient applications Google provides for use by bloggers on the Google Blogger platform:
- Google Docs: Google Docs makes it easy for a blogger to share on their blog anything they create within the Google Docs application from spreadsheets to business presentations.
- Blogger Mobile: Conveniently allows you to post content directly onto your blog from your mobile phone.
- Google Earth: Allows a blogger to easily create maps for their blog.
- Gmail: As with Blogger Mobile, Gmail allows you to easily post content onto your blog from using Mail-to-Blogger.
- Google Groups: In this line of business, networking with people on the Internet is crucial. Google groups allows you to easily network with people who share the same interests relevant to yours and your blog. If you can not, for some strange reason, find a Google Group that is relevant to your blog’s topic, you can create one yourself, acquire group members and drive traffic to your blog.
- Picasa: Picasa offer basic photo editing that you can use to edit and adjust photos to be posted to your blog. As a Blogger member, a Picasa account is given to you free.
- Feedburner: Feedburner provides bloggers with one of the most popular web content feed-management programs online. With your RSS feed, readers can subscribe to it and receive updates to your blog on their mobile devices. I’ll go into RSS feeds and how they can increase traffic to your blog later on.
- Google Toolbar: The Google Toolbar increases functionality making it easier for a blogger to make blog posts as the BlogThis! button is placed directly on the toolbar.
- Google Reader: With Google Reader, bloggers can easily subscribe to other blogs of interest to them and receive updates through Feedburner on any computer or most mobile devices.
- YouTube: Yet another of Google’s major acquisitions on the Internet, YouTube has become the most popular user-submitted video sites on the Internet. As such, YouTube makes it extremely simple to add videos to your blog. I’ll talk about video blogging, also known as vlogging, later in this series.
- Google Video: As with YouTube, Google Video makes it simple to upload your own videos or a video of another to your blog in a matter of seconds.
- Google AdSense: Google AdSense is Google’s advertising program through which bloggers can earn money by placing Google ads on their blog. AdSense integration on Blogger couldn’t be easier. Many professional bloggers earn a living simply through the money they earn through the Google AdSense program.
All of the applications above are linked for your convenience to explore them and see how they can make your blogging efforts easier. In the next article of this All About Google Blogger series we will explore some of the basic benefits of blogging using the Google Blogger platform.
Previous article in this series:
All About Google Blogger: A History of Blogger
Following articles in this series:
All About Google Blogger: Benefits to Using Google Blogger
All About Google Blogger: Ready to Start Blogging?
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