Bugs in Blogger prompt user complaints

Google's Blogger service has been generating a steady stream of complaints from users this year, including hours-long outages, feature malfunctions and data loss.

The problems are particularly frustrating to users who migrated to the service's new version and expected to benefit from its more solid platform.

Users contacted in recent days via e-mail report a variety of problems, including the disappearance of blog entries, an inability to post comments, failed migrations to the new service, kinks with the RSS feature and unresponsiveness by Google to support requests.

For its part, Google says that most bugs are isolated incidents affecting relatively few people at a time and that Blogger's stability will improve as the migration to the new platform progresses.

"We know how important a service Blogger is to our users, so the highest priority for the Blogger team right now is monitoring the migration to the new platform, listening to feedback from people who've migrated, and tackling as fast as we can the little bugs that inevitably pop up here and there in a new product," says Courtney Hohne, a Google spokeswoman.

This isn't good enough for Chuck Croll, an independent network and security consultant in northern California who hosts several blogs on Blogger including a work-related one called PChuck's Network and another one that tracks Blogger issues. "We were promised a more stable environment with New Blogger. That hasn't been one of the features provided," Croll wrote.

Google began testing this significantly revamped version of the service in August of last year, and removed the beta, or test, label from it in December. The "new" Blogger offers new and enhanced features, and Google says it is built on a more powerful IT platform. The "old" version suffered from serious performance and availability problems the last three months of last year.

In September, Blogger, which is free, ranked as the leading blog hosting and authoring service in the U.S. with 21 million unique visitors, according to comScore Networks.

Google is taking a phased approach to offering users the option to migrate to the new Blogger, precisely to nip bugs at the bud and limit their impact, Hohne says. Yet, the impact to some users has been significant. Kim Meyer, from Greensboro, North Carolina, is on the new version and disappointed with a smattering of bugs that have affected her blog, like photos not loading and an inability by visitors to post comments. "Lately I've been having more problems with the service that I don't think I should be having," wrote Meyer, a Blogger user for almost two years.

Laurie Jackson, who is on the old version, suddenly had archived posts disappear from her blog. She has been trying to get help from Blogger via multiple postings on the Blogger help forum and e-mail messages to the support team. She has received two generic e-mails that repeat information available in the help section of the Blogger site.

"The biggest problem with Blogger is their lack of technical support/user service. Bloggers are largely left to their own devices when it comes to solving some of the problems that crop up from time to time," wrote Jackson, a New Jersey resident, echoing a common complaint. "So right now I am rather annoyed with Blogger for not caring about us."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.