No, we assumed that whoever owned .blog would sell subdomains at a reasonable profit to anyone who wants one. But now we learn that maybe only Blogger users will be able to use .blog. I can understand why they wouldn't sell subdomains of a brand name like .google, but for generic word TLDs we were assuming it would run like .com. Turns out there's no such restriction in the process AFAIK, and now it's too late to complain about a loophole that we didn't foresee.
No kidding, private entities bid on, to buy, new gTLDs. Did the author assume that they would pay for them and then have to offer them up as a public good?