Google recently announced that they’d bought the company behind Blogger, which provides tools that let people build personal weblog-type sites.

The blogging community went collectively insane, and several near-histrionic posts followed. Most predicted that the purchase of Blogger by Google would spur a renaissance in personal expression or similar Utopian visions. I’m pointing to none of them here, since many of them are from people I respect and who should know better. (You can Google for them, of course.)

Google’s purchase of Blogger was simply the easiest way to buy a million people who’ve demonstrated an interest in publishing personal sites, some of who might even pay for the priviledge.

It’s happened before, only GeoCities had nearly 5 million users when Yahoo bought them. Google’s purchase means that Blogger has a future, but anyone expecting a revolution in personal expression simply because Blogger-based sites will be reliable are setting themselves up for disappointment.