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Google's Top Disappointments
Nicole Ferraro has a post on the top 10 Google disappointments since they began operations. The post is 11 pages long and worth a read if you have the time. Nicole seems upset that so many of Google's products and services are crap but yet they still get so much press coverage that Google is not deserving of. I don't agree with most of her disappointments so I've included a few of my own after her list.
Here's Nicole's list from "bad to worst" with my take next to each:
10. Gmail -- yep, it's still in beta - I believe it actually can't come out of beta anymore, it's like when a place becomes a historical landmark. Of course today's Gmail outage shows that perhaps it's not ready to come out just yet.
9. Monetizing YouTube - the real monetization will come from brands sponsoring branded content on YouTube not from ads that no one will interact with on a cat video.
8. Google App Engine - it's the cloud - we all float in the cloud - and if it goes down, you just blame the cloud - not the App Engine.
7. Gphone - what's a Gphone?
6. Knol - Google can't let JC have all the fun, right?
5. Lively - Sex be selling, Nicole clearly didn't get the memo.
4. OpenSocial & Friend Connect - it's all about the data, the connections and the relationships.
3. Google's Partnership With NASA - isn't this where they land the Google party jet?
2. Orkut - it's big in Brazil!
1. Google's Culture & Hypocrisy - they are a public company - this is what they do.
Now here's my list of real disappointments:
1. FeedBurner's ad network death - see previous post.
2. Jaiku - had such a great chance to "pownce" on Twitter.
3. Google Campfire - how's about bringing the party jet to NYC for a campfire sometime? I will get us the great lawn at Central Park.
4. Google Video - why is this still up and running?
How has Google disappointed you?
Nicole's list is crap - if she is not a shareholder, she should not be bitching!
GMail is one of the most successful things Google has done, tonnes of people, including me, swear by it.
Plenty of software might never leave Beta; that doesn't make it any less worth using if it does its job well, and the outage today is the only outage I've seen since I started using GMail sometime in '04.
every man and his dog have launched online storage, backup solutions etc - for a company strongly advocating cloud computing I am stunned by the lack of movement on "gdrive".
If (or when) "gdrive" is launched it will have to be ground breaking - otherwise it will undermine their strong market position - i mean even MS is already in this market
Hi Allen,
Great post. I really must admit that I am really disappointed very much in the Feedburner ad network, as well as Orkut. Google has some great sites.. and they have made some great acquisitions, but they still havent gelled everything in correctly yet!
I feel like Google has taken on too much at once... many of these things could have possibly been more successful had they rolled out each one slowly and surely - with lots of attention on each... each month they come out with something new (which I guess they have to in order to keep up with the others) but I mean who do they have to TRULY keep up with... themselves? Certainly NOT Yahoo and MSN... they're lightyears ahead...
Just one simple sentence. Girl, you're a totally stupid.
Allen,
If you get the Great Lawn at Central Park, I'll bring the marshmallows.
IMO, YouTube to me is their biggest disappointment - not because it has 100m users (I get that) but because it hasn't been able to do anything with them.
What you mention, of brand sponsoring, seems like a good idea but I wonder if the content-owners will want to go 'solo' on this one (like NBC's HULU) which I *think* has a better chance of being profitable.
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