Google has released a beta version of a new blog search tool.
Just a little playing around with it suggests they got it right: it is fast, and was able to find a lot of good stuff quickly. The advanced search is particularly useful, as you can search by author, by topic, by date, and by a bunch of other criteria unique to blogs.
The other refreshing thing is that so far, the results of completely free of commercial dreck--no phony link farms and the related tricks that try to get you click on results that are not really relevant. It will be interesting to see if Google can keep the results "pure." Unfortunately, what we are likely to see is a sudden rise in phony blogs written just to get into Google search results. But right now, it works great.