This week Google launched, and then spectacularly fucked up, their new uber service called "Buzz". With all the security mess involved many have hailed this as Google finally jumping the shark. Regardless, on the back of the recent rise in anti-Google mutterings it was clearly a Bad Thing To Happen™.
As a huge Google fan Buzz has been a struggle for me, and so far I have not commented on the numerous threads kicking around on the news sites. But, my god, Google your crazy.
Great Idea, But the Execution?
There are numerous problems with Buzz, a lot of them havent been touched on yet. Equally there are some great ideas. The key issue is that the execution of them has been poor at best. Lets ignore the Elephant in the room for the moment (i.e. the security mistakes) and concentrate on why Buzz generally just feels a little underwhelming for me as a user and developer.
Firstly a great idea: all Buzz streams can be exported using the API (and apparently you will soon be able to write to a users stream too). I had a similar idea a few months ago; for a contacts/personal info manager site with social feeds aggregator and a great API sat on top to pull/push content with. Friend Feed does a lot of that but I think there is definitely scope to create a much more customizable experience for both users and developers (I'm thinking along the lines of being able to share personal information, contacts and feeds on a much more fine grained basis).
Perhaps I will blog on this concept later. But, suffice to say, initially Buzz seemed positive move in a direction I am excited about. Sadly they made a few too many crucial errors in the execution.
Clearly the first of which is Gmail integration. I can see the point in doing it- the inbox is a key part of anyone's day and Google want Buzz to be part of that. The problem is that Buzz doesn't really fit into an inbox style workflow. You jump in, read your new emails, reply and bug out (I realise others may work differently, but still). When you read mail you are there to engage in either a conversation or to update yourself on some [relatively complex] information. Buzz is too quick and the information too varied to be of use in the same way. If you have images, twitter updates (and other statuses) and Google Reader updates all crowding in from friends you are consuming that data fairly rapidly (like Twitter). It's not something you'd expect Gmail to be used for.
I'm guessing one reason they heavily integrated with Gmail was because there is an established user base with lots of content ready to publish. This seems a smart move (till it backfired of course) to push the product forward. With Wave one of their main problems was that it was yet another site for people to keep track of and so, Im guessing, it kinda flopped (I'm only basing that on the drop off of news relating to Wave, I haven't used it since launch). What frustrates me though is that doing it like this turns Buzz from a feed consolidation and publishing service into a "new thing in your inbox". If users aren't impressed with it in it's pure form then they wont take it up - and so building services on top of that is problematic. Instantly the cool new stuff I saw is, well, useless.
The other let down appears to be the API. You can drag out your feed sure, but it doesnt seem like there is any way to customize it. That makes the feed fairly useless. What I wanted to see was the ability to customise a feed with search terms, the data sources and so on. Imagine you're creating a product review site - what better way to get lots of really relevant reviews than to filter a users Buzz feed for relevant posts, by their friends, from review sites, web stores and blogs. That's just one simple idea but I could see hundreds of really useful social websites springing up powered by Buzz. Google have access to an incredible number of users pushing an insane amount of content; getting access to that would be pure gold for a developer.
What they Should Have Done
Simples: created Google Buzz. To me it should have been a standalone site consisting of the best bits of Ping.FM, Friend Feed and Twitter. Then on top a rock solid customizable API with which to drag out data, log in with Oauth and post content. These are things Google does well; lots of consumers and great developer tools (stick to your strengths right?). The Buzz site should have been a Twitter like stream of information in an easy to access format just to make sure people are using it.
How awesome would that be.
Jumping the Shark
I dont think Google have jumped the shark with this. They lost a lot of good will in the previous few months for a wide variety of reasons (one of the problems with being such a big company) and the result is that the fairly massive fuck up now is hurting them more than it might have (maybe not more than it should have). In a way it could be a good wake up for them.
I defended Google in the past because I still trust them and find many services incredibly useful and innovative. But there is no real excuse with Buzz - it's a poor execution of a neat idea, with major security flaws and no real focus. I realise Google have the resources to sustain Buzz for a good while and probably it will achieve "critical mass". But what they should do (were they the Google of the past) is scrap most of Buzz as it exists, go back to the drawing board and launch a real service a few more months down the line.
With that said I do think that people now talking about dropping Google as their provider are being a little hasty. Buzz is a mistake but I dont think it entirely undermines trust in an otherwise pretty security concious company.