Published 03:09 IST, July 18th 2020
Google loses ownership of Blogspot.in domain, millions of Indian users affected
While Blogspot users can still see the blogs if they switch to blogspot.com, millions of users that have shared links with blogspot.in in the URL are in a bind
Blogspot users in India are experiencing access issues as they try to login to their accounts on the Google-owned blogging site. This is because the tech giant has lost control over the blogspot.in. domain, rendering the site inaccessible to its millions of users in India.
While Blogspot users can still see their blogs if they switch to blogspot.com, millions of users that have shared links with blogspot.in in the URL are in a bind as those links are now broken.
Google yet to acknowledge the loss
According to reports, Google no longer owns the domain name blogspot.in and it currently belongs to domainming.com. It is unclear when exactly Google lost domain control of Blogspot's India page. Before the incident, the URL was a part of Google’s blogging ecosystem called Blogger, known as Blogspot before it was acquired by Google in 2003.
The URL blogspot.in is not a separate address but merely a redirect that is generated based on the country where the blogger is residing. The concept of URL’s was introduced by Google back in 2013, it was done primarily to make it easier to remove content that violated local law. By having a country-specific URL, Google could easily remove specific content so that it was not available to local readers of that region.
While this issue may not seem that critical, millions of Indian bloggers that rely on Blogspot for their source of income as well as exposure are suffering. Google is yet to address the loss of the URL and has even failed to notify its users.
As per reports, the domain name has been put up for sale by its current owners on an online marketplace where one can buy and sell domain names. The seller has decided to open bidding for the domain name at $5,999 which converts to Rs 4.5 lakhs.
However, this is just the starting price for the domain name and it's likely to go to the highest bidder; therefore, the actual price may be much more than the current quotation.
(Image Credit - AP File)
Updated 03:09 IST, July 18th 2020