A somewhat disappointing fact about Google Blogs is that the site has been written purely in JavaScript so all you’ll see is a blank page if you try opening Google Blogs Search in a browser that doesn’t support JavaScript (like screen readers) or a browser that has JavaScript disabled – something that’s quite common on mobile phones.
No Google Blogs Search for non-JavaScript browsers
Maybe Google decided to go with a JavaScript-only site to prevent screen scraping or is it anything to do with Google Chrome that is known to render JavaScript faster than other browsers.
Another issue, as I mentioned before, is the amount of spam content in Google Blog Search. For instance, the following story is from a blog that is republishing content from TechCrunch.
Spam Content in Google Blogs Search
Surprisingly, that spam blog made its way into a news cluster on Google Blog Search but the original story from TechCrunch can nowhere be found. This I think is an important issue that Matt didn’t touch up in his article comparing Google Blogs with Techmeme.
Personally, I don’t feel that Techmeme has anything to worry about yet.