Case Study: Google disabling external urls in Blogger.com comments
05. Dec, 2007 
18 Comments
4 days ago I was told by Sara about Google disabling external website addresses [urls] in all Blogger.com comments. 2 days ago Cerebral Mum also sent an e-mail saying that the act of disabling external websites in all Blogger.com comments was not an example of “user appreciation.” I read more into the topic, and realized that I agree.
The situation: Google disabling comments
What Google through Blogger.com is doing is not allowing readers to leave their external website addresses in the comments they are leaving. . That means you can only leave a comment if you are either a Google/Blogger.com user, or if you wish to be Anonymous with a nickname. As of this writing, Blogger.com is not allowing any field in the comments area to allow any commentor to enter their website url. A snapshot of the new Blogger.com comment page is included below.
What it means?
This means that if you want to leave a comment, you can either use your general name or nickname to identify yourself, or sign up for a Blogger.com account and log in through that account to leave a comment. This results in people having only a single fixed identity on Blogger.com, which is the blogger.com account itself. Otherwise, your only other option is to use a nickname to identify yourself. With millions of people having similar names, there will be no way to identify where “Michael” leaving a comment about pastries is the same Michael that left a comment last week supporting the idea of eating food while driving or if it was the other Michael who left a comment on how to hide from squirrels. One of the most unique identification elements online, a website, will not be allowed to be used in identifying you anymore. You are either a Blogger.com user, an Anonymous person, or no one.
All of this also means that the things you were told and expected to expect are now changing, and you were not consulted in any manner when such a change was being decided. Because of this, the following 14 effects result in you not being appreciated by Blogger.com .
