Ok, so it's a long post, that talks about buggerall for the most part, but they

• want to keep it free
• want to keep the basic system
• want to use it to tackle blog spam?

Welcome to the Infrablog: Weblogs 2.0

However, at the infrastructure level, very little is currently being done, and there are remedies that can be deployed that will provide significant, if not thorough relief. As a first “killer app” to deploy on top of weblogs.com ping services, we’d like to make progress in improving the “signal-to-noise ratio” in the blogosphere. Does that mean censorship? No. As above, we’re committed to maintaining the integrity of the free and open ping stream, in all its wild and chaotic glory. But we believe that many will want to take advantage of filtering services – screen out the splogs based on a threshold value in the analysis – in much the same way that mail users see value in spam filters for their email inbox.

That’s a tough task, and one we won’t be able to make much progress on alone. We’re already working with a number of parties in the ecosystem on this subject, and believe that as part of a community effort, VeriSign can help lead the way to much better “signal” at the infrastructure layer of the blogosphere. Which will improve the user experience for everyone. Which is why we got involved in the first place.

It all sounds very nice, but how the hell will analasys at the network level do any better than GOOG/Yahoo et al's algorithms?

I wont say it's bollocks, cos maybe i dont understand it well enough, but i can't see it...