blogging revolution

so was reading Quyen's post about blogging today.. and it set me thinking.. where did this start, whose idea was it, how far has it spread?? well, everyone already knows how powerful it has become as a tool, a medium and an outlet to what must be millions of people around the world! different poeple blog for different reasons.. to each their own i guess.

Andrew Sullivan wrote a very interesting and informative decription on the blog revolution.. and credited it all to one Evan Williams. now i must admit i had never heard of him, nor had i ever tried seeing who came up with the concept.. so i googled him up.. and there he was.. blogger.com profile no.1!! he's now Blogger Program Manager at Google! funny thing there at Google was that he was sharing search results with a fine 'Single Barrel Vintage Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey'!! methinks he has really tried to keep a low profile!

so after a nifty bit of investigation using the profile #, i found out that Blogspot alone had 5,819,452 users, and growing by the minute!! how about that then?! there are loads of other blog services too.. and now MSN has jumped on to the bandwagon too.. a bit too late eh Bill Gates?! this also lends credence to the conspiracy theories we have had about Google's plans for world domination through the internet.. check this out:

• Google - premier search engine
• Froogle - online shopping, trying to upstage E-Bay
• Orkut - online database for meeting people
• Blogger - most widely-known blog service
• Gmail - first e-mail service to introduce 1 Gb. mailboxes, and 'conversational' emailing
• Google AdSense - online advertising on personal and business webspaces
• Google Groups - online mail groups, competition is Yahoo Groups
• Google News - up and coming auto-generating news service
• Google Images - the most comprehensive image search engine, available for free

errm, am i missing anything else here?? well, i have one more idea for them.. they should try buying Overstock too.. and go head-to-head with Amazon!! soon the trademark multi-colored "Google" sign will be as widely known as the "Coca-Cola" one!

NB: thank you gaurav for reminding of this most-important one!

• Google Scholar - for educational research papers - a revolutionary idea this one!