No, You Can't Have That URL

Every day in Blogger Help Group, we see the naive yet plaintive queries

I want to setup a new blog. The perfect address for my new blog would be xxxxxxx.blogspot.com. But today I found this message at that address:

Sorry, the blog at xxxxxxx.blogspot.com has been removed.
This address is not available for new blogs.

Who do I speak to at Blogger, to get that address released to me?

or

There are a lot of blogspot names that are taken and never used with no way to contact the owner of the blog to see if they're willing to part with the name. Any suggestions?

or

Is there any way to obtain a blogspot name that is currently being used by someone but has been inactive?

Subsequently, when told

No, you can't have that URL - pick another and get to work putting valuable content into your new blog!

The hopeful new blog owner might respond with

That makes zero sense. The blog is GONE. But the address is being reserved in perpetuity for what exactly?! This constitutes a Catch 22, aka chaos.

At first glance, it makes sense to recycle unused URLs.

At first appearance, that's a valid argument. Why not recycle unused URLs? But what are these "removed" URLs? Let's look deeper.

Do you keep up with any of the ongoing threads at Blogger Help Group?

Besides the "I want a URL that's not available" whine, one other thread subject that we see a lot of is "My blog just got deleted, because they say it's spam. It's NOT SPAM!!!"

When a blog is spuriously locked, as a spam host, the owner gets to appeal.

What happens, with a unjustly detected spam blog, is that the blog owner has to appeal the deletion. If the owner was a victim of a false detection, the blog is restored, and returned to the owner. And that's the other side of the story here.

In order for unjustly deleted blogs to be returned to their owners, the URLs have to be locked when deleted. If a blog has been removed, but the URL is not available, the blog was removed, pending review and return to the owner.

A deleted URL is simply not going to become available.

There's no deadline for the review process to start, or to complete.

In neither case are you guaranteed the ability to assume control of the URL, from another account. The only way to reliably take over control of a URL is to transfer control of the blog.

Find another URL, you can't have this one, it belongs to the owner - neither offline / online status, nor even activity level, is relevant to continued blog ownership. Find an available URL, and get to work giving value to your new blog.

And remember - if you are setting up a new blog based upon some recent news story or new fad, other people may be doing the same.