Google's Blogger

I've had this weblog (Wow! How I hate to use the word "blog!" It's such an ugly word, calling up as it does other not-the-most-pleasant terms, like "blob" and " bog." (I know I've said all this before, and maybe more than once. But as my wonderful mother used to say, never mind. I'll just say it again.) But when the computer nerds were accomplishing all their miraculous deeds, like having computers conveying graphics of every degree of complexity, they also failed to pull their heads out of their behinds when it came to naming things.

As I was saying, I've had this weblog for getting close to eight years now, and during that long while, I've gotten so much use out of the blogging service I use, Blogger, that I keep thinking I should be recompensing them for it in some wise, because it has never cost me one red cent. And in fact, I had also wondered why so many people keep asking for donations to their sites, as if it costs lots of money to keep their blogs going, when I keep mine going all by myself without much trouble, and if I wasn't online to keep up my site, I'd be there for other reasons. It involves some bother but not trouble, and I could post every day if I wanted to, as those other bloggers do, but I don't wanna. (I know, I know. Actually I seem to have lost all ability to post every day or even every second or third or even fourth day, but that's not my fault. That is something that can always be blamed on Father Time.)

I could even post more graphics, if I felt I needed to and as all those other bloggers soliciting cash also do, extensively, and I like to think that I could do it without too much extra-added exertion. But I've never wanted to, maybe out of a certain degree of laziness, but even more because I think that would make this site load more slowly over other people's computers, and I never want that, though there aren't that many "other people." Actually there are hardly any.

Anyway I was always mystified that Blogger also has never asked me for one red cent, and instead over that long period of years it has just kept right on silently and diligently hosting my many hundreds of rants and raves and keeping track of them and even keeping them stored somewhere from where I can retrieve them in seconds -- until of course that inevitable day when Google, Blogger, and everything else crashes and all will be lost -- had I not saved all my posts against that happening, or at least most of them, minus the ones that I posted between the last saving and the most recent posting, a number that always keeps growing from none to many and then all over again, as does the shame that would ensue should they be lost. But I can't be expected to stay right on top of things all the time, can I?

Well, just yesterday, when someone was speaking of blogging services, I saw the term, "Google's Blogger," and then it hit my always slow but now 80-year old brain. The reason Blogger has never asked me for any bread is that it is a service of Google, and everybody knows that Google gets lots of money from somewhere, probably from advertising, and so that's what I've been benefiting from.

Of course I had known that Blogger had some kind of connection with Google. This had become most obvious whenever Blogger didn't inititate right away, and I had Google doing the annoying stuff of demanding that I first cough up my name, address, and password, when I knew that it had already recorded that info, numerous times. But I hadn't put all that together. I guess I just thought that that was one of the main things that Google does, besides maintaining its stellar search facility -- its other main activity is to suddenly and occasionally jump up out of nowhere and withhold important things, like my weblog, on pains of me turning over my name, address, and some password that I am never sure is really the right one. But now I know. Sorry, Googler and Blogger. And glad that you make yet another of those old sayings appear now to be just one more myth. You know, the one about free lunch?