On My Betrayal - or - Blogger: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship?

It has finally happened. It began two years ago with G-mail, for which I abandoned Yahoo! mail. I set up a YouTube account when Google bought it. I started using Google Maps instead of Mapquest, Google Calendar for all of my anal-retentive, color-coded planning needs. Most recently, I switched to Google Chrome instead of Firefox. I'm next-to-ecstatic to check out Google's new operating system, Chromium, when it drops at the end of the year. Hell, I'm even looking into Google Buzz at the moment, for what it's worth. And all of these have been healthy decisions, I think. But there has been one facet of my life which Google had yet to control: my blogging. Well, today, that changes, too.

I have really been getting into the whole "blog" thing, as of late. Not only mine, but many others, as well. And as I surfed through the various self-published journals across the Interweb, I noticed what became a disturbing trend to me: that many, if not most of them, were on Blogger. yournamehere.blogspot.com. Each blog's name preceded by that little orange "B." That is to say, affiliated with Google. I have only been blogging - I don't really like that term, but it's what I have to work with, for the time - for only 6 months, or so, but I've become loyal to my Wordpress blog. I've learned the in's and out's of the publishing tool. Uploaded photos. Written articles. Tagged and reread and edited, where necessary. Linked to other sites. I even inadvertently convinced a friend or two to sign up and start writing.

But, Google had yet another product to dangle in front of my face, the proverbial "carrot before the horse." So, like a married man experiencing thoughts of infidelity, I told myself: What can it hurt to just look? And now...well, here I am. I have changed camps. I have betrayed Wordpress. And good riddance. I think this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

In the weeks and months to come, I will be posting my thoughts and insights - whatever good they may be - here, and reprinting some of my old work on this blog, as well. So stay tuned.