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Your Blog Is Forever

According to Blogger Help This blog looks abandoned, can I have its address?
Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire.

That's good news - if you're the blog owner. Short of your blog being hacked, what you publish will remain online - and your property, forever. Of course, your ability to maintain your blog and URL will be subject to your ability to maintain the account that administers the blog. And the future online status of the blog will be subject to how it's published, and its future after you're gone.

That's bad news - if you're the wanna be publisher to the URL, and that URL is not available.

Neither current blog content, nor publishing activity, is relevant to URL availability.

Periodically, we see the question
I want to publish my blog to this URL. There's a blog at that address, but it hasn't been updated in years. Can Blogger give me that address?
And the answer is, of course
No. See the Blogger Help post
Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire. Therefore, we can't take away somebody's blog address to give to you.
Please choose an available URL.

And, inevitably, the next question
Can Blogger help me contact the owner?
and that answer is
No. If you see an email address on the blog, use it.

The email address, for many Bloggers, is half of the authentication, to the account used for maintaining the blogs. Would you want Blogger giving out your email address to anybody who asked for it? Nope. So would you expect Blogger to give you somebody else's email address? You may, at your own discretion, publish your blog anonymously - and the other guy has the same option.

If you are setting up a new blog, pick an available URL, and get started, today. Don't waste your time, and other people's time, wishing for a URL that you want but can never have.

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#Blogger tells us that our blog will be ours, forever. This policy - which is the foundation for many other Blogger policies - can be either a blessing or a curse - to some blog owners, and other would be blog owners.

Comments

Nitecruzr said…
this sucks

LOL. So does your comment.
MFS said…
This seems to be a major complaint by many bloggers. These blog names are being taken and not used. There's a particular blog name that have not been used in years. As a matter of fact he only posted a 'test' page back in 2007. When someone posts a 'test' page for 3 years and does nothing else with it, it's obvious he's either not going to, he's dead or frankly an overly lazy person. I would like to use the name and now I can't because it's taken and not being used AT ALL!

Blogger's rule about this is insufficient. Sooner or later bloggers are going to have no choice but to go elsewhere!

Having this unused name is unproductive and unfair to those of us that want to do something meaningful with it. Another name that I also want has posted one blog in 2005, THAT'S IT.

We’re not asking Blogger to unprotect someone’s privacy by giving out their email address or any other info. Blogger is right, we wouldn’t want them to do this to us, however, this ‘solution’ by Blogger is not a solution.

Let's work out a productive solution for this problem, please.
Nitecruzr said…
LOL. It's uniformly unfair, to everybody, and that's the productive solution that Blogger has already worked out.

If your idea of promoting your blog requires that you publish to "theURLthatIdemand.somelamedomain.com"
simply because you can't get "theURLthatIdemand.blogspot.com", then you (and probably Blogger) will be better off with you publishing to "theURLthatIdemand.somelamedomain.com".

BTW, you can't have "theURLthatIdemand.blogspot.com".
MFS said…
This is the URL from Blogger about this. I replied 'NO' to the question 'Was this article helpful?" and posted my last comment above. If you're having the same problem and/or agree to this, then I suggest you do the same. A simple one phrase to them by many bloggers should brings us a better solution.

http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41931
Nitecruzr said…
Blogger's article is posted everywhere, too. Why do people not read it, instead of starting lame discussions that simply say the same thing, over and over?

I provide my articles, which explain the issues in more details. If that offends you, then you are free to read any article that pleases you. Here is yet another (and yes, that one contains a link to my blog, too):

http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help/web/faqs
Anonymous said…
Thank you for your post and for your time- this is great info to know.

Sincerely,
Sherry
Is there a way to remove the blog without sign in info? I know this is ludicrous, but I cannot remember the login info to get to the dashboard to dovit myself. Help please. Mary
Naveed Ahmed said…
This policy by Blogger, in my view, is debatable. Blogger could, for example, collect contact Info's at the time of creating the blog and use these contact details by itself to ascertain at a later stage if he or she still wants to retain blog ownership and/or publish content of a seemingly inactive blog. Blogger could offer this as a paid service for facilitation of those who want to takeover an inactive blog owned by somebody else.
Nitecruzr said…
Naveed,

Thanks for your comment.

Blogs are published anonymously - and for very good reasons. Major world events have taken place, partly facilitated by anonymous blog publication.

Blogger blogs are available to everybody, equally. Blogger has no provision for people to buy the blog name of their choice - regardless of whether the blog is currently dormant.

If you're poor or rich, you can have any available blog name which you choose - and you have it for eternity. To have a paid service, allowing the rich to buy the blog name of their choice, would violate that promise.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2009/12/blogger-doesnt-care-about-frequency-or.html

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2009/07/precedence-and-uniformity-justify.html

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