Death by a thousand paper cuts, that is. It's been mentioned before that due largely to their dogmatic insistence upon presenting opinion as fact, the newspaper industry is in deep trouble. Their main source of revenue is ads, and as subscription rates drop, newspapers can't bring the numbers of eyeballs that advertisers are looking for. And as ad content declines, subscribers have even less reason to renew. It's a vicious cycle, and one that is entirely a result Leftist ideology. This is probably why Leftists hate capitalism - the market gets to decide winning and losing strategies.
When Leftists control the "journalism" schools, and when Leftist publishers hire the graduates on, the result is essentially predetermined. It's a lesson that Google has apparently not yet learned:
It looks like Google has officially joined the Barack Obama campaign and decided that its contribution would be to shut down any blog on the Google owned Blogspot.com blogging system that has an anti-Obama message.
That characterization seems unduly harsh, in view of the fact that at this time Google appears to have locked down only seven anti-Obama channels. However, all are members of Just Say No Deal blogroll, which actually has a large number of bloggers from blogspot.com who appear to be anti-Obama. It'll be interesting to follow this story along, if only to see whether or not the purge continues.
Google has accused the bloggers on the seven sites presently locked down of "spam blogging", as they note in their missive to one blogger:
Your blog, at http://comealongway.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog.
If, as appears to be the situation in this case involving Google, the intention is to shut down blogs on their blogspot.com operation for the apparent crime of involvement in a blogroll effort, it's worth noting that bloggers of other stripes - such as those associated with the Conservative Majority Project and COBRA - may find themselves subject to similar scrutiny. While it seems like a silly thing for them to do, the fact remains that as Blogger is a free service provided by Google, they can certainly implement any restrictions in regard to terms of service that they wish.
The above is not to be taken as an implication that Google is now engaged in an all-out political war; no evidence exists as yet by which to determine the nature of their inquiries. It is interesting, however, to note that they acted pre-emptively by blocking blog-holder access to speech while they "review the site". That seems a bit harsh. One would think that they might be able to conduct a "review" without impeding access. Clearly, there was a conscious decision at Google to do otherwise.
This blog began at Blogspot, but was relocated to a commercial site quite some time ago due to concerns over content ownership and other issues that appeared unresolved at the free site. In retrospect, it seems that the move was prescient.
In light of Google's recent actions, it seems reasonable to suggest that current holders of Blogspot sites carefully review the latest terms of service documentation.
