Google to Say Goodbye to Blogger

Google is getting rid of Blogger, but unlike Boutiques it’s only dropping the name.

Mashable reports that Google, fresh off the successful launch of Google+, is looking to bring more of its social products under the Google brand umbrella and will be rebranding Blogger and Picasa as Google Blogs and Google Photos respectively. Presumably to emphasize the social areas where Google products have some traction, and as we mentioned earlier, the fact that there hasn’t been a peep on Boutiques in all of this social fervor doesn’t seem to be a good sign for the social fashion site.

Blogger is, of course, far more established (and popular) and frequently pops up in lists of top domains. In the US, Blogger hosted blogs even topped LinkedIn among $100k+ HHI social media visitors.

While YouTube is more popular than Blogger and Picasa combined, it will be interesting to see how users respond to the change. Google famously tried to take on YouTube with Google Video, but conceded to (and acquired) them once it was clear they had a significant lead. Part of keeping that lead growing after the acquisition was allowing YouTube to continue on their way with some autonomy under a non-Google brand. While WordPress.com has emerged as a strong competitor to Blogger and Tumblr is gaining ground, Blogger still leads both by a significant margin when it comes to traffic. Google has never had a Google Blogs option, but we have to wonder if rolling Blogger into Google+ will push the wider adoption Google needs to make its social effort succeed, or just confuse people and push them to a platform that’s still clearly focused on blogs.

The rebranding is expected to coincide with the public launch of Google+ in 4-6 weeks.