Google loses ownership of blogspot.in, breaking millions of Indian blogs
Google's Blogger service has long been the solution for creating personalized blogs, without worrying about paying for a personal domain. But, if you have been using the Indian version of the free blogging tool, you may notice that your site is not working. This is because, somehow, Google has lost ownership of the 'blogspot.in' URL. Here's more about this weird development.
Blogs on blogspot.in are broken
As reported by Bleeping Computer, if you try to open your own or someone else's blogspot.in blog, the page will not open, giving a "Server IP address could not be found" error. This is the case for more than 4 million Blogger blogs registered in India - all inaccessible to be opened or read by internet users in the country.
Google let the domain expire last month
A WHOIS inquiry shows that Google let the blogspot.in domain expire in early June, following which an India-based hosting provider 'domainming.com' purchased the same. The domain is still inactive but is available for purchase on Sedo, a marketplace for buying and selling domains, at a starting price of $5,999, which translates to approximately Rs. 4.5 lakh.
Remember: Blogspot.com still works
While blogspot.in and all blogs on it may have become inaccessible, the main blogspot.com domain is still active. As such, you can use it to access all the Indian blogs that may not be opening through the blogspot.in domain. But, do keep in mind that the page will not redirect automatically and you will have to change .in to .com manually in the URL.
No word from Google on the matter
At the time of writing, Google had not issued a comment on this incredible blunder. The company had shifted Blogger to localized domains like .in to enable faster processing of takedown requests, but if it does not take note of the matter and re-purchase this domain, there could be serious problems, as millions of blog URLs could be rigged to redirect to harmful/malicious websites.
