notes-business-google opinions

problems with google

google is great, but even great companies aren't perfect. problems:

• doesn't believe in all of its products.
  • wave was killed after about a year
• doesn't support (minor)
• or even listen to users unless you have a connection (although mb does collect stats on users)
  • should really give products at least a full two or three years after open beta before closing
• doesn't integrate its products
• UI is straying
• getting too big (corporate culture straying)
• not open source
• too secretive about upcoming products or features
• hires too many stanford ppl, too many academics

good things:

• generally good (meaning, spare, simple, but upbeat) UI design
• famous
• hires smart people
• good engineering
• generally good corporate culture

problems with google wave:

• cancelled
• not sufficiently integrated with google docs, dropbox, hg, git, wikis, text editors, email
• API too complicated
• UI too complicated
• not easy to send a bunch of pages to a group
• not easy to link
• not easy to create a subset recentchanges

suggestions:

• focus on integration
• publically post "committment levels" to products (google has google labs but if they were going to just close gwave after a year then it should have been a lab); suggest:
  • "alpha" (which is like Labs)
  • "beta" (like what Wave apparently was, in retrospect; google dilutes this by calling everything beta; suggest a policy of bringing things out of beta and into the next level as soon as a committment is made not to kill the product for 3 yrs)
  • "release" or "standard" or "normal" (normal products; semi-committment to continue for at least 3 years upon designation)
  • "stable" or "supported" (better than release)
  • "flagship" (like search, youtube, apparently android for google)