I'm sure many have already seen the Google blogs. Below are a few suggestions to the various Google folks suggesting ways they can improve the blogging experience for themselves and their readers

  1. The blogs currently don't have names attached to each post nor do they have a way to post comments in response to each entry. The power of blogs is that they allow you to have a conversation with your users. An anonymous weblog that doesn't provide a mechanism for readers to provide feedback is little more than a corporate PR website. Currently I don't see much difference between the Google Press Center and Google Blog besides the fact that the Press Center actually has the email addresses of real people at Google on the page while the blogs do not.

  2. Pick better URLs for your articles. An example of a bad URL is http://www.google.com/explanation.html which provides a link to Google's explanation of the Jew Watch fiasco. Why is this URL bad? Well do you think this is the only explanation Google will ever give? Does the URI provide any hint to what the content is actually about? I suggest the folks in charge of managing the Google URI namespace take a gander at the W3C's Choose URIs wisely and Tim Berners-Lee's excellent Cool URIs Don't Change

  3. Either explain to your bloggers that they should use their common sense when blogging or come up with a policy where blog posts are reviewed before being posted. Google is about to become a multibillion dollar company whose every public utterance will be watched by thousands of customers and hundreds of journalists, it can't afford PR gaffes like the one's described in C|Net's article Google blog somewhat less than 'bloggy'.

  4. Provide an RSS feed. I understand that Evan and the rest of Blogger have had their beefs with Dave Winer but this is getting ridiculous. Dave Winer has publicly flamed me on more than one occassion but I don't think that means I shouldn't use RSS on the MSDN XML Developer Center or remove support for it from RSS Bandit. If an evil Microsoft employee can turn the other cheek and rise above holding grudges, I don't see why Google employees whose company motto is “Do No Evil” can't do the same.

  5. Let us know if working at Google is really as cool as we all think it is. :)


 

Wednesday, 12 May 2004 17:59:06 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Why were you flamed? ;)
Thursday, 13 May 2004 09:48:54 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Good post.

Item #4: http://subscribe.feedster.com/googleblog

I was also shocked to find they only provided an Atom feed. Then I tried the Feedster builder and it worked pretty well. It is not perfect but now my RSS reader can monitor the Google Blog.
Friday, 14 May 2004 15:46:34 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
"Pick better URLs for your articles" - why don't you use your own advice ;)
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