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)