A conference of bloggers at Westminster this week has rekindled the debate over the wider power and influence of weblogs. Monday's seminar on the political potential of blogging was organised by VoxPolitics, a pressure group campaigning to "explain how new technology changes politics". But mere days after the geeks stormed parliament, unbelievers are voicing concern that blogging is merely "the lint of the internet". Andrew Orlowski of IT news site The Register has derided the seminar as just another over-hyped attempt to revive the internet, which these days is only good for "pornography and free music". Orlowski's "permanently dribbling bile gland" has in turn been savaged as "empty dreary bitching" by Tom Coates of Plastic Bag and an organiser of the event. (Oh, and then there's these 2lmc people who seem to hate everyone.) VoxPolitics themselves, who were very proud to have organised the first Wi-Fi network within the Palace of Westminster, have tried to get the final word on the matter by accusing Orlowski himself of being a blogger. A spokesman for The Register today said: "I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?" All this petty squabbling resurrects the rather more considered debate over May's scandal at the New York Times. The Sunday Times credited bloggers with the sacking of senior editors at the NYT after the furore over young hack Jayson Blair's liberal use of artistic license in his news stories. However, an article in the Online Journalism Review refutes these rather grandiose claims, further puncturing the general air of "blogger triumphalism". This would seem to be an excellent opportunity to bring up our own musings on the deification of Google. As discussed in a recent article by Geoffrey Nunberg of the New York Times, Google and the internet (can we even separate the two anymore?) have been hailed as the "second superpower". Predictably enough, most keen to cast aspersions on the idea is that Orlowski chap again, who seems remarkably prepared to piss on any and all campfires still burning on the medium that has given him a voice. Perhaps we should leave the last word to the web's least self-aware site, www.internetisshit.org,  which, needless to say, isn't much of a fan of blogs or Google. "In accepting freedom of speech, we can't hide from its consequences," proclaims the anonymous master of unwitting irony. He/she even suggests that libraries might be better portals to knowledge than the Great Google. Heretical luddite or the only person online brave enough to speak the truth? You know where the Forum is√¢‚Ǩ¬¶