Anonymous wrote:

You should take a look at the google patent, and learn about distributed trust networks. There are plenty of papers on this topic. Google figured out that the web is actually one gigantic database, and that a distributed trust network could be used to decide which parts are important and which parts are not.

Thank you – I’m familiar with some of the literature on distributed trust networks, and have checked out some of the first implementations. None of those could be considered to be a success in the sense that Google succeeded with their search service.

Anonymous wrote:

I am not convinced that they’ll have much more information about blogging by actually owning the service, compared to just spidering it.

There could be a slight edge in having direct access to stored data (instead of having to follow links), and there’ll be of course a speed advantage for the parts they’ll be hosting. I think the main advantage that Google will have here is their brand and reputation, as well as enough hardware and know-how to correlate all that information in some useful way.

The Guardian’s take on this is worth reading, too.