Blogger sets off for Babel

The Blogger weblogging service broke away from its English-only status this week to offer itself in nine other languages.

Key Blogger sections, such as its sign-in and account pages, are now available in Japanese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Korean, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Brazilian Portuguese.

The Blogger posting interface would also be translated into these nine languages "soon", said Google, as Blogger's international expansion continued over the coming months.

Google, which operates the world's most widely used internet search engine, has been busy building a suite of complementary internet services, such as the Gmail web mail and the Picasa image management and sharing tool. It acquired Blogger last year when it bought the service's creator, Pyra Labs.

Industry observers have pointed out that by offering services that complement its core search engine, Google can build more loyal and lasting relationships with users, which will be key for the company's ability to complete against rivals Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo in the consumer internet services market.

Juan Carlos Perez writes for IDG News Service