Google Angers Bloggers

Filed in archive Blogging News on June 30, 2008

Google is in trouble again. This time the culprit is the flag function on its Blogger.com blog service. It seems a large number of anti-Obama blogs were flagged as splogs and as a result Google blocked them while it investigated. This prompted outrage among the bloggers, who felt they were being treated unfairly. While Google quickly apologized and restored the blogs, it wasn't good enough for many of the affected bloggers, who promptly moved their blogs to other services such as Wordpress.

"It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts," Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. "While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the 'Just Say No Deal' network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression."

It doesn't look like Google will get off easily this time. There are a lot of angry bloggers out there right now. They say they were never given an apology or explanation and feel Google unfairly treats bloggers whose blogs have been flagged, proclaiming them guilty until proven innocent.
So is this a simple mistake or something more sinister? Let me know your thoughts!