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Google seems to rapidly waking up to the world of blogs. Although their own official corporate blog is typically bland, and was recently hacked, and their blog search engine has trailed the capabilities of others, including Technorati, the company is taking steps to catch up. Today, Google added the option to search blogs alongside news search, and enhanced their Google Alerts service so you could track keywords across blogs, Google Groups, and news.

Meanwhile, following some very public "unplanned outages" in the company's Blogger engine, some of the techies behind the service have come forward to explain how its happened, and how it won't happen again. The culprit? "Quirky hardware", they say - which isn't too impressive, given Google's cash horde and technical acumen.