Everyone has an opinion on what Google’s acquisition of Blogger means. I’ve read a lot of them. So far, there have been some interesting theories about what Google wants out of Blogger. Wired’s theory of the links is a good one, but why would Google buy Blogger when it already does links? Its whole search algorithm is based on links and volume. Having direct access to the posts would make indexing a little faster, but it means they’ll have to build something brand new to interface with Blogger’s backend, or migrate Blogger’s backend to a new system.
I think everyone’s missing the point. Google already has access to all the links it will ever need. It indexes millions of pages a day and does a pretty good job of it. Adding slightly faster indexing of a couple hundred thousand blogs won’t make them any money (to recoup whatever they paid Evan). So, what do I think they’re going to do? How does Google make money now? They sell services. I think the bulk of their cash comes from selling their search services to companies like AOL (and others). They then give AOL (and others) money to display their sponsored links on their search products, which people pay Google for. They’re in the service business now. What does that mean for Blogger? It means Google probably already has a good idea for how to package Blogger’s product up into XML feeds and XML-RPC calls to sell to other companies. Of course, this is just a theory – I swear. If I actually had any insider knowledge about Google’s plans, I wouldn’t be sharing them here.
Good theory, no?