Do no evil my ass. Last night and into today, many people using a Blogger account to host a music blog logged on to find this. The news is making its way across the web now, but DJ/record producer Tommie Sunshine tweeted about it way early.
Presumably, people got the ax for posting MP3s, as music blogs are wont to do. Fair enough, maybe -- there's probably language somewhere in the Blogger agreement forbidding you from spreading around media that isn't yours. But MP3 posting is a long-standing custom in music blogging, where the gentlemanly thing to do is respect bands or labels if they ask you to take a song off the site.
Word on the street is that Google gave no notice to blog owners and no way to save their archives. Meaning years of work could be lost. Now, nothing ever really disappears off the internet, and if you woke up without a music blog you can use things like the Way Back Machine to recover most of your content. But still -- why? What's more, why now?
We suspect it has to do with Google's many recent affiliations with for-profit music services like Lala and Vevo. Paying for music online, or even looking at advertising while you listen to music, becomes a lot more interesting if you don't have any other options. Still, this hardly seems in step with Google's stated mission to allow free and open access to everyone. And they could have at least sent out warnings.
Meanwhile, you may have logged into your Gmail account today and been welcomed to Buzz, which is basically Twitter but with better-integrated video and photo capabilities. Google isn't actually trying to kill Twitter with Buzz (it just made for a catchy title), or if they are, they're doing a terrible job. Twitter is most interesting for the big names and publications -- people you don't know who have access to information you don't. And none of those people will allow you to follow them on Buzz because it is tied to their email account.
Speaking of Twitter, and for no reason at all, we close with Taylor Swift's latest tweet. Yes, this is definitely her. And, no, we have no absolutely no idea why this is happening, either.
