Google Blogger Account Pain

Ok, here's the story of my using of blogger.

In 2006, i started to use it tentatively. This is http://xahlee.blogspot.com/ . (i am also on livejournal perhaps a bit before)

In 2007 or so, google says blogger software got major update, and advice users to update it. However, it doesn't provide migration, but you have to create a new account. So i did, which results in [http://xah-lee.blogspot.com/]

In 2008 or so, i noticed that sometimes i post comments to other blogger blog, and the link on my name doesn't link back to one of my blogger acount, but to some non-existent xah lee. Apparently, that's because i was signed in to the web with gmail while i posted the comment, but both of my blogger accounts are not using the gmail address.

Also, blogger is kinda odd in that when you compose, the URL is “blogger.com” but your site is “blogspot.com”. This adds the confusion.

FAAK google.

This problem is not just with blogger. It happens in google groups (groups.google.com) and orkut (orkut.com). So i end up with 2 or more accounts on each service, either because they forced you by their software update or because the service came before gmail.., and they don't have migration that merge your account info.

The result is very confusing. You wonder why some your data isn't showing up, or which account you used what email.

Today, while i was dealing with some emacs packages that lets me auto post to blogger from emacs… i noticed now that google lets me merge my xahlee blogger account to gmail address. Finally, nice. After a little playing with their interface, it's fantastic. Far better than livejournal.