Dude, Where's My Blog?

Over at the Sports Law Blog, where I regularly contribute (or at least, where, when I have the time, I try to regularly contribute), we had a somewhat rude awakening this morning.   Instead of seeing our blog when visiting its usual home, sports-law.blogspot.com, we saw the following message:

Blog has been removed

Sorry, the blog at sports-law.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

Did you expect to see your blog here? See: I can't find my blog on the Web, where is it?

Apparently, we're not along among Google/Blogger blogs in pulling an overnight disappearing act (something which has apparently been going on for a while). As we work to get things straightened out, I'm reminded of the two-faced character of blogs.  On the one hand, blogs are permanent.  Anything you say in a snarky comment can easily come back to haunt you years later when someone "Googling" you reads your words out of context.  On the other hand, blogs are incredibly impermanent.  With the (mis?)click of a button somewhere in Googleland, 5 years' work and 2000+ posts can disappear.   

A few years back, I was involved with another group blog dedicated to policy issues in my particular region (Northwest Ohio/Southeast Michigan), which, without notice, was deleted by its (founding) administrator.  The domain name of the blog was quickly snapped up by an on-line casino hoping to profit off the reputation the blog had generated.

Apologies for this post's title to WordPressMax.