Blogger is quietly archiving an important part of the Web.

I've felt for a long time that Blogger is a pretty underrated service. It may not have the plugins and third-party support that Wordpress has, but it has a set of features that meets most bloggers' needs and it is quite customizable for those who want to make their blogs unique. The point of this post isn't to praise Blogger as a quality piece of software, however; instead, I decided to write this post because I'm so impressed with Blogger as a web host. Google's big pocketbook has freed its web services from worrying overly much about the costs of bandwidth and storage space. Gmail's continually increasing storage capacity is an excellent example of this, but so is Blogger, as any blogger whose blog has survived a Digg or Stumbleupon traffic avalanche unscathed can attest to.

With web space no consideration, Blogger also has the freedom to never have to delete inactive accounts or blogs. What goes on Blogger stays on Blogger...forever! While some confessional sorts might prefer that their too-personal blogs descend into obscurity (they can always delete their blogs themselves if they really want to), keeping old blogs alive is a worthy endeavor that is tremendously useful to us Internet people. Personally, my biggest beef with Wordpress blogs has nothing to do with the software -- I just hate that so many people get inspired to start up Wordpress blogs with their own domain only to lose interest after a few months to such an extent that they're quite willing to let their blog die as soon as their hosting package expires. Unless some other service (like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine) has archived these blogs, they will only live on in the hearts and minds of their readers and in the form of pesky dead links scattered about the Internet. Perhaps not every blog deserves to live forever, but I don't think anyone wins when a domain squatter takes over a blogger's former domain just because that blogger lost interest in maintaining his blog, died, or experienced some serious financial hardship. Archives at least give us, the Internet public, an opportunity to sift and search through a great deal of content and discover the really good stuff buried amidst the mundane. Blogger is a bit better than a typical archive because it also allows a returning blogger to bring an old blog back to life at any moment, whereas the Wordpress domainers who abandoned their blogs may have to renew their domains, repurchase hosting, and upload their content all over again.

This isn't to say that just because Blogger is great at archiving the blogosphere that everyone should use it. As I said previously, I do think Wordpress is great software and I wouldn't want my favorite Wordpress blogs to suddenly shift over to Blogger. Serious bloggers aren't going to be the people who let their blogs die, and many of them have quite significant financial incentives to keep their domains renewed and their hosting fees paid. I do sometimes wonder what will happen to the blogs I read after their creators die, but in many cases I think a friend or family member of the deceased blogger will take over and at least keep those archives up. Still, Blogger's commitment to archiving is in my opinion one of its best features, and those who want their content to be accessible on the Web for the foreseeable future would be well-served to at least consider starting a Blogger blog.