Deletion Is Not Alternative, If You Cannot Authenticate

Some supposed blog owners, unable to login to their Blogger accounts because they forgot the Blogger account name or password (or never bothered to remember either), try to compromise.

They figure that, if they can't regain access to the blog, then Blogger will be willing to simply delete the blog - and everybody will be happy. They appear to have overlooked the repeatedly stated policy, which promises us that our blogs will be ours, as long as we wish to own them.

The problem is, blog deletions are as sensitive to illegal action as account recovery - and illegal actions are a very real threat to our blogs.

Blogger exercises due diligence, in requiring proper authentication for Blogger account recovery.

Blogger can't delete a blog, any more freely than give control of a blog.

Any requested deletion, of any supposedly owned blog, must be no less controlled.

Blogger promises us

Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire.

This means that our blogs will not be deleted, or transferred to the control of another person, without careful validation of the person requesting the deletion or transfer. If the other person cannot prove rightful ownership of the blog in question, Blogger is not legally entitled to delete the blog, any more than they are entitled to transfer control of the blog.

We are permitted to own and publish our blogs, without any minimal required activity, and without any required proof of our real life identity. We are entitled to publish our blogs when we see fit - and are entitled to come back to our blogs after any length of time - if we are able to authenticate ourselves.

Blogger lets us publish, at any rate we prefer.

Blogger will not harass us when we are inactive, whether or not anybody else offers to publish to our URL with more vigour. Neither will they give anybody else control of our blogs, either to publish - or to delete. Similarly, they won't give me - or you - access to somebody else's blog, or harass somebody else.

If you find yourself unable to access your blog, and delete it on your own, try using the improved Google account recovery wizard, before asking that Blogger delete your blog for you.

In limited cases, the Google tool Removing Content From Google may be useful. Finally, concentrate on making your blog or website more useful, and organically improving your reputation.

Blog Ownership - Possession Is The Law

Long ago, Blogger blogs had a very simple membership permissions policy.

Each blog had an owner, and members. The owner was the administrator of the blog, and ownership could not be transferred.

This simple policy was a problem, because some blog owners would eventually lose interest in a blog, and want to cede ownership to someone else. In other cases, people were known to die suddenly, leaving blogs with no live owners. In both cases, Blogger Support would become involved, and would manually transfer ownership.

Later, Blogger developed the Permissions wizard, and added a class of member called "Administrator". The original publisher of a blog becomes the first administrator, who may, at his / her discretion, designate additional administrators.

The ability to designate an "Administrator" solved the problem of nontransferable ownership, but introduced a second problem.

Any administrator could, at her / his discretion again, remove him / herself (or any other administrator) from the administrators list.

Initially, this improvement created two problems.

1. Some bloggers managed to remove all administrators from the list, creating blogs with no administrators.
2. Some bloggers, newly made administrator, would inappropriately remove other bloggers (including the original administrator aka "owner") from administrative status.

Blogger fixed the first problem, by adding a safeguard - making the Permissions wizard check for the presence of other administrators in the membership list, before removing administrator permission from any one member. However, there remain two problems, now.

1. The safeguard works only if you can guarantee that all administrators can perform as administrators.
2. This policy works only if you can guarantee that all administrators will perform honourably.

If blog membership is to be fully transferrable, all administrators to a blog have to have equal status. If you have an "owner" class of administrator, and a suddenly dead owner, you have a blog with no active owner. Or, you have blogs with non transferrable ownership status.

Right now, anybody who is a blog administrator is a blog owner. If you make someone an administrator, and that person removes you (and any other administrators) from administrator status, that person becomes the blog owner.

If you have an administrator who dies, you do not prune the administrator list, and you are able to remove yourself from administrator status, you may end up with a blog with no live owner.

The administrator(s) / owner - whoever she / he may be - has the right to decide over disposition of comments and posts - and of who to make a member, and to make an administrator. Blogger cannot, legally, "restore" anybody's previous rights.

If the "owner" deleted the blog, it's going to remain deleted. Contributors, and former "owners", have no say in the matter. If deleted content must be recovered, it may be possible to do this on a page by page (post by post) basis - possibly from blog cache or a blog posts newsfeed.

Possession is the law, for Blogger blogs. If you gave up control (voluntarily or even involuntarily), it's not your blog.

Blogger Doesn't Care About Frequency Or Quantity Of Blog Updates

The process of "bidding" determines who is best suited to take on a given task, in some multi party games and relationships.

In the game of Contract Bridge, the players of the game get a chance to assess their personal holdings of the cards dealt to them, and the probable holdings of their prospective partner and opponents - and predict the number of rounds ("tricks") that they expect to win, in the game to come.

In the "game" of construction bidding, contractor firms get the chance to predict how much funds they will require, to perform a given project, given the chance by the firm bidding the project.

In both cases, different parties bid for the right to perform a task. Some would be blog owners think that procedure should apply to blog ownership.

I want this URL - It's the perfect URL for my needs - for my blog. The URL is in use, but it hasn't been updated, recently. Why can't Blogger give me that URL?

In the Blogger Name Availability "game", the implication is

The current owner isn't using that URL properly, and I know that I can do a better job!

Unfortunately, there is no bidding process here. Blogger, in This blog has been abandoned and I want its address says simply

Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire. Therefore, we can't take away somebody's blog address to give to you.

Blogger isn't going to setup a bidding process, or a courts system, to decide whether a given URL should be reassigned to you, or to some other hopeful party. If the URL is in use, it's not going to be available. The current owner of a blog has the right and responsibility to decide upon blog contents, including how often and how many updates should be made to the blog.

Not so long ago, with the owner given the latter choice to make, my advice for getting the blog well known would be to "publish, publish, publish" - because the more publishing that was done to a blog, the more random "Next Blog" traffic would be directed to the blog. In November, 2009, that changed. Now, your blog has an equal chance of getting random "Next Blog" traffic if you publish daily, as if you published once, 5 years ago - and never again.

The frequency and volume of updates, to your blog, are irrelevant to the validity of that blog. If you believe that your readers will be happier with you publishing daily, fine. If you believe that your blog is just as good as it's ever going to get, that's fine too. It's your blog, and it's your decision.

And somebody else's blog is their decision - and Blogger supports that decision.

Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire. Therefore, we can't take away somebody's blog address to give to you.

If you need a URL for your blog, pick one that's available, and make the contents of your new blog valuable. Value comes from the blog contents, not from the URL.

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Some would be #Blogger blog owners would like Blogger to accept bids, for assigning the right to publish blogs to popular URLs. I've even seen the suggestion that bidding should be a paid feature, for Blogger URL assignment, with owner contact information for each blog being required.

Blogger provides blog names, on a "first come, first served" basis - payment is irrelevant. Blog names are available for eternity, poor or rich. And anonymous ownership is part of the promise.