Google loses control of ‘blogspot.in’ domain, breaking millions of websites
Spotted by The Next Web and BleepingComputer, Google apparently let the blogspot.in domain lapse in early June, with Google no longer in control of that domain. Rather, it’s now owned by domainming.com and is available for purchase by anyone with $5,999 to spare.
Google hasn’t let the blogspot.com domain lapse, which is where all these blogs are still visible. However, the blogspot.in sites won’t automatically redirect there. Google previously set up the .in and other domain variations for different regions where Blogger sites were created. Having localized domain names allowed faster take-down requests for content hosted on the platform.
As it stands right now, the lapse in domain ownership has caused over 4 million Blogger-hosted websites to become broken in Google search and other areas where they were linked. BleepingComputer requested information from Google on this in early June, but never received a response for the company.
It goes without saying that this was a massive screw-up, but it has the potential to do some real damage. If Google doesn’t re-purchase the blogspot.in domain, the millions of URLs on the web could be redirected to harmful sites, to spread scams and/or malware, and so much more. $5,999 seems like a small price to pay for Google to prevent that.
Blogger gets major UI refresh on Android w/ first update since 2016
Remember Google’s Blogger platform? If not, we’d understand, but tonight Google has started rolling out a major refresh to the Blogger app for Android in its first update since 2016, weirdly on the eve of its big hardware event.
Blogger was once a very popular option for anyone who wanted to get their thoughts onto the internet, but over time, competitors such as WordPress and Medium stole the spotlight. The platform has been all but forgotten, but Google has unexpectedly given its Android app some attention.
The new Blogger v3.0.1 app for Android gives the app a complete redesign that offers up Material Design, a slick overall design, and more. That new design alone is a big deal as Blogger has been using the old “holo” design for ages now. Plus, the app finally has an updated icon with this release (which supports Android’s adaptive icon feature too).
Somewhat hilariously, installing the old Blogger app (v2.1.3) would actually display a warning about incompatibility on newer Android versions.
In terms of functionality, everything is pretty much the same this time around. Users can still access their blog with a simple Google sign-in and both create new posts and edit old ones. You can also manage multiple blogs by tapping the blog name at the top of the interface. I noticed that the new app seems to have trouble with uploaded images for some reason, but an old blog from 2015 probably isn’t the best example in this case.
It’s still a barebones application, but at least it looks a lot better now and works with newer versions of Android. For a lot of other Blogger functions, you’ll need to use the web app.
In another twist, Google built the new app, at least in part, using Flutter
