"Hello. I am on the Blogger team and am one of the guys who has been helping Ann with her blog..."

I just noticed this comment by "brett" on my June 30th post "I'm trapped in a Blogger blog and I can't get out" (the one with the update that says Google got me out). The comment continues:

First I wanted to say that on behalf of the entire Blogger team, we're very proud to have Ann's blog on our platform and many of us are regular readers. Of course we wish she would stick around with us, but if Ann feels like it's time to find a new home elsewhere, we are committed to making sure that users have control over their data as well as tools for making the move off Blogger possible. It is the reason we have spent a non-trivial amount of time helping her with the export file, even though it may end up on another service. To be clear, the entire 1.8G file is now in her hands.

While our export tools may have been somewhat unreliable when handling blogs this large (Althouse is one of the largest Blogger blogs!), along the way helping Ann we discovered ways to improve them and moving forward Blogger will be much better equipped to handle cases like this.

So Ann while I'm personally sad to see you go (if that is indeed the decision), I wanted to let you know that you will always have a home on Blogger and a team who cares about your experience with Blogger. That also (of course) goes for everyone. We love hearing from users, and anyone can bug me directly on Twitter (@electrobutter) if something is on their mind, or hit up the team via @blogger.

Thanks to Google for this help and for letting us all know about that email Twitter address. I have appreciated Blogger very much over the years, and think it's a great place to begin and to stay for a very long time, as I did.

When the move is accomplished — soon! — this archive will remain here, even as all the old posts and comments will also appear in the new place. The new posts will only appear at the new place and will continue there. (The new blog will still be called "Althouse" (with the url althou.se).)