Are Google blogs just PR?

Avid Google watcher that I am, I woke up yesterday morning wondering if Google would come out of the 2007 gate strong with a major announcement: multi-billion dollar acquisition, Google Phone launch, YouTube compensation to content owners…

The Google “Press Center” has not yet been updated to reflect that we are now in the 2007 news cycle. The last official word we had from Google in 2006 was put forth at the official Google Blog.

Google’s last official public communication of 2006 was a review of Google’s official blog postings in 2006, posted as the last blog post of 2006 at the official Google blog.

I discussed Google’s December 30, 2006, blog post by headlining: “Google blog to open for comments in 2007”

The Google blog post is entitled “A year in Google blogging.” I read the five paragraph story which consisted, for the most part, of year-end posting and traffic stats, but honed in on the second and third to last lines which seem to have been added ever so discreetly, almost as an afterthought, to Google’s end of year recap post:

And before long, perhaps you can begin leaving comments directly. We're working on that.

Google’s public written announcements, at its blog or elsewhere, are always precisely thought out. For me, aside or not, the official Google blog signaling an acceptance of comments at the blog in 2007 was breaking news, and I reported it as such.

Surprisingly, general blogospere reaction to Google’s final blog post of the year focused on the fact that the Google blog did not accept comments, in 2006.

Zoli Erdos led the charge in a post entitled “The official Google blog is NOT a blog,”  followed by blogosphere trendsetter Michael Arrington referencing Google’s no-comments in 2006 policy to ask “What is the definition of a blog?”

Google’s final blog post of 2006 reviewed the topics the official Google blog covered over the year:

In the last 12 months, we unveiled 24 new products here. We wrote up 128 product upgrades, new features and how-to-use-it items. We told you about 7 acquisitions. We blogged about policies or issues 23 times, on subjects including Google in China, how Book Search works, click fraud, and Net Neutrality.

New product launches, product upgrades, acquisitions, policy statements…sounds strikingly similar to official press release announcements!

IS THE OFFICIAL GOOGLE BLOG A BLOG, OR JUST A VEHICLE FOR PRESS ANNOUNCEMENTS? WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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