Has anyone notice that every single thing they do to blogger makes it worse? Recently they changed the way Ctrl-I works from adding an “<em>” tag to some kind of style=”font-style:italic” bullshit. That is just a step in the wrong direction. “<em>” is not deprecated, you morons!

Today I discover that they’ve broken the way image upload and insert works. It use to upload the raw image and give you an image tag. Now you get at least two copies of the image, an href, a bunch of style crap, and no clear way to control what size it’s going to use. All undocumented, of course. Again, this is not an improvement.

I was already wondering how blogger could dare show its face at SXSW Interactive this year due to how badly they suck. They seem to have all kind of money to throw around and yet absolutely no talent for making a blogging system work. If things keep going as they are, I can only imagine that by the next SXSW they’ll be the AOL of blogging, the shameful has-been that instantly marks its users as newbies and losers.

Here’s my solution: Google (owner of Blogger), buy WordPress (which has its own problems), keep everyone currently involved on purely as evangelists, hire new technical talent that understands things like standards and usability, and then treat it like an actual application. Then maybe we’ll get what we’ve been waiting for ever since the IPO: a blogging system with the slickness and functionality of Gmail.