

Confirmed: Google Me coming this Fall - Garbage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/confirmed-google-me-coming-this-fall/2458

======
larrykubin
Why are so many people expecting this to be a "killer" when they have failed
to gain much traction with their other attempts to compete with
Facebook/Twitter. I don't know many people using Orkut, Wave, Buzz, Picasa,
etc.

~~~
c1sc0
Wishful thinking? I know I want a Facebook "killer" to pop up soon. Network
effects are what I hate & love most about the tech industry: why is it that
something beautiful always has to be ruined once some player becomes big
enough to dominate the space? PCs : Microsoft, Social Networking: Facebook,
Mobile Apps: Apple

~~~
nanairo
Personally I am more worried of a big company dominating _more_ than one
space. Say, I'm happy with PS3 to beat Xbox 'cause Sony is not a threat
anywhere else, but Microsoft got the Windows/Office monopolies.

I am happy with Apple being strong in iPod/iPhone because they are weak in
PCs. And I am happy with Google being strong in search, and Facebook and
Twitter having the social network market.

If we got a Facebook killer from Twitter I'd love it. But from Google? I think
they got enough fingers in enough pies for the time being. :)

~~~
avar
At least Google has a policy of you owning your data, and of making it easy to
grab all your data so you can move to other services.

So if they ran something like Facebook it would be much easier to compete with
them outside of their ecosystem, unlike Facebook which tries to dominate all
data submitted into their system.

~~~
nanairo
That is a good point... though I really don't like either choice. :D

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izendejas
Google doesn't want to be social, they just want "social graph" data--two very
different things. It's why they've failed.

Google needs to offer a compelling reason for people to transfer their
profiles and hang around Google services in order to get the "social" part
somewhat right. And then Google will succeed in getting the data they value
most: the things you explicitly "like" or favorite, in this case,(with a
bright yellow star). And that's where I think Freebase comes in--or so I hope.

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regehr
We can only hope that Google Millenium Edition lives up to the awesome legacy
left behind by Windows ME.

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tyng
I have mixed feeling about this.... yet another attempt by Google to get
social.

I read an article somewhere else that the reason Google doesn't get social is
because of its "geek" culture (no offense to fellow geeks, I'm just quoting
the original article). Because Google is so technology focused, it sometimes
loses its grip on human interaction.

I can't say I'm totally agreeing with that article but it does make some
sense. Wave for example, technologically excellent and revolutionary, but
really hard to use for a non-tech person.

~~~
nanairo
I am not sure about that. Though I do think there is a certain feeling of
elitism within Google, like all the brightest people are inside (which to be
honest it's probably a pretty good assessment). So I am not sure how much they
can get the very real but very (intellectually) shallow world of social
networks.

Googlers seem to love to tackle hard problems (e.g. Wave and Instant search)
but social networks are not a hard problem from an engineer point of view.

~~~
tyng
"Googlers seem to love to tackle hard problems (e.g. Wave and Instant search)
but social networks are not a hard problem from an engineer point of view."

So the mentality goes: there's no motivation to come up with the next best
social network, unless it can also simultaneously calculate the
interconnectedness of every human being on this planet...

~~~
nanairo
Yep, I can see them getting excited data mining people's social networks.
However before they do that they need to _get_ the social network...

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rakkhi
I think it is interesting that Google said that Google Me will not be
something that is standalone but suggests they are learning the lessons from
the past.

Mashable had a good article on the demise of Wave and the lessons that can be
learned (<http://mashable.com/2010/08/06/google-wave-lessons/>)

Lesson 1: Keep Expectations in Check They have announced it now for Fall, make
sure they release in fall and if it is private beta, make sure that does not
go for longer than 1-2 months. Keep the media in check

Lesson 2: Make Your Product Clear They clearly need to state what this is and
what is not. E.g. it is not Facebook, it is not Twitter it is a way to add
more social functions and collaboration to your existing Google services

Lesson 3: Launch When Ready Linked to point 1 but it has to have a good level
of quality at launch.

Lesson 4: Have Real Value If it replicates things I can get already from
Facebook or Twitter it is not going to add value.

If it does allow me to get the best results from my private services (e.g.
Facebook, twitter, Google reader) like Greplin but with instant search
directly from my Google window that would be valuable.

If it gives me Rapportive but in a way that works in Gmail awesome. If it
gives me Wisesync but in a way that works in Chromium also valuable.

If it lets me play video directly from my Gmail inbox or "like" something
within my inbox or search and "stream" this to my social feeds

If it gives me a feature like mysixthsense within search or google reader or
adds in Postrank as a google lab feature to inbox and search these would also
be valuable to me.

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ziweb
I'm hesitant about the social layers search stuff. Honestly, the data I put on
the web is personal, and it deserves its own respect. Its not just a
statistic. If my friend wants to know what I think about something they can
email me.

I think it would be a brilliant move by Google to combine their separate
services into something similar to Facebook. Google has all the parts, like
video (Youtube), pics (Picasa), mini-blogs (Buzz), chat, and e-mail. They do
all of this better than Facebook, and add Google Voice on top of it. It's just
natural for them to start a social network that integrates all of these
different parts.

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fauigerzigerk
I wonder what we actually want from "social". I know that I don't want to
subscribe to some kind of friend spam merged with regular spam from
advertisers or share "stuff" with people in my address book. That's totally
useless for me and bloating all kinds of Google services with it will be
annoying.

What I do want is collaboration, ad hoc collaboration, project based
collaboration, etc. I want to connect and integrate my data with that of
others with less friction than today. Google should go after Microsoft Office
and leave Facebook to Zuckerberg's "dumb fucks".

------
stellar678
I wonder if Facebook will be the new Netscape and this will be the new
Internet Explorer 4.

~~~
JacobAldridge
I wouldn't put money on it, but if this is IE4 then I think an analogous
Facebook will probably be IE7 or IE8... or Chrome.

~~~
stellar678
My read is like this:

Facebook / Netscape - Hotshot early player that does most of the early
innovation, has near complete market penetration and doesn't quite hold on.

Google Me / IE4 - After a few feeble attempts, the product that successfully
takes over through a combination of (a) being forced upon a gargantuan
installed base and (b) being a pretty decent product, as a result of the prior
iterations.

~~~
woogley
I would peg the "Hotshot early player" label to MySpace / Netscape

~~~
notahacker
Yup. Google Me is more like Google Chrome; however much better it might end up
being it has a lot of work to win mindshare.

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rooshdi
I wonder if Google Me will implement some search sharing elements and
socialize the Google Search experience instead of offering another standard
social network. A current web project of mine delves into this, but Google
obviously has the resources to push this to the mainstream, similar to Google
Instant, and make it much more valuable to users from the onset. It would be
more risky than another standard social network, but much more relevant to
their core search service. It's also interesting to speculate whether or not
Google Me may be the social element around Google OS. We'll just have to wait
and see.

------
m3mb3r
Well, I hope they don't automatically sign me up and add my contacts from my
GMail account like they did with Buzz.

Partly because that's annoying and mainly because I don't want to belong to
another social network.

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zmmmmm
This will be a good test of whether Google has learned anything from their
previous failures - Wave, Buzz, etc. Both were excellent products technically
and both failed to take off. I'm particularly sad about Buzz because it is
much much better technically and feature wise than Twitter.

The problem is, I think the key to it is going to be something they'll never
do - lack of integration. They have to totally utterly separate this from
search and gmail. If they mix these things then it'll be yet another product
where the public is confused and uncertain about what it is, what it does, and
why it does it. It has to be simple - the way the original Google was simpler
than any of its competitors. They have to remember their roots here. Do it
simple. Do it incredibly well. Make it clean and unambiguous.

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zavulon
It's hard to pinpoint when, but I think at some point last year I stopped
viewing Google as "special" and started considering them just one of many
companies.

To me, Google was special because all their early products were made to solve
very hard problems that me, among many other people had: search sucked,
webmail sucked, etc.

That Google is dead, I'm afraid. Wave, Buzz, and now (probably) Google Me..
all products created with shady goals, terrible execution, disdain for
privacy. Most importantly, they are products that NO ONE FUCKING NEEDS.

I'm still continuing using Gmail and Google for search because they are the
best (although DDG is close, and I'm rooting for them). But I'm definitely
looking elsewhere for anything close to innovation.

/rant

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rfugger
Prediction: privacy nightmare.

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edparcell
I misread that, thinking it was odd that Google would fall to copying
Microsoft, and surprising they would copy Windows Me.

Reading about the product left me slightly less impressed.

Facebook already has social covered, and I've pretty much stopped using it.
Buzz does not - Google don't get it, and they don't get that they don't get
it. If Google Me was an upgrade to a desktop application, I probably wouldn't
bother to install it. As it is, I'll look forward to having my cheese moved
again.

------
brown9-2
Am I the only one who thinks that the idea that Google needs to "get into
social" is a big mistake and a bad move?

They're being duped into spending a lot of time on energy on something where
it isn't clear that they'll get the equivalent value back.

They already dominate advertising. What else is there to gain here? It's like
Microsoft feeling like they need to create a competing search engine. The game
has already been won.

------
sown
I really use google just for search and their ads which I find useful and I
often click more than any other kind of ad.

I don't like where this is headed.

------
gkoberger
I'm really interested to see how this goes. It's been a long time since Google
released a "killer service." I'm really hoping Me is more than just a Facebook
clone, and that they learned some lessons from Buzz (and Wave?).

------
cracki
this is probably going to to the way of Buzz. they'll screw it up, it'll be
intrusive, privacy will be violated.

besides, how much more "social" can google get? someone at google is trying
too hard.

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smiler
I'm not sure most people would want their searching habits to be 'social' in
that plenty of people want to Google for stuff in their own time without
anyone else knowing about it.

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rodh257
This sounds like a good move from Google, do something akin to Facebook
instant personalization in their other products, rather than creating the next
facebook/myspace/bebo clone.

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nagnatron
I sincerely hope that it will be horrible so that I'm not tempted to hand over
even more of my personal life to Google.

No offence to the people building it.

------
powrtoch
Poor naming: "Google me" is already a verb phrase. If the overlap was
intentional, I don't think it was wise.

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varjag
What a terrible name. Any relation to Dr. Evil's Mini Me?

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lotusleaf1987
This is exactly what I don't want, more stuff forced onto me through my Gmail
account. Stop using Gmail as a trojan horse please Google. They should just
make a standalone clone Facebook that _can_ integrate with Google's services,
if desired. I really disliked the way Buzz was forced onto me and I really
don't like the way that the new chat box won't go away and you have to
manually hide each contact. Just buy Twitter and use their talent, you've got
the cash and it's not really in Google's genetics for social.

~~~
omnigoat
Trojan horse? Strawman, baby!

Using your gmail as a username isn't bad. It makes it easy to know where to
send you emails for account details and such. _However_ , I think GMail needs
a revamp if it's going to be the focal point of many integrated systems. What
I _don't_ want is another Facebook clone. A developer-centric social layer, to
integrate various components of their developer infrastructure (google
code/analytics/adsense, etc), could work. _Could_. They've got a bad track-
record at "social".

~~~
Garbage
> What I don't want is another Facebook clone

I think for this time, this is exactly what Google needs to do to kick
facebook out of business. Facebook platform is a proven success. If Google
clone it, they will eventually get users.

Google have other sources of income. But for facebook, its just
"Facebook.com". If "Google" makes the clone and gets users, facebook.com is
almost dead then (read like "myspace").

~~~
adbge
_> If Google clone it, they will eventually get users._

Why would anyone leave Facebook to join Google's ghost town? Further, Facebook
is impossible to successfully clone because part of Facebook's inherent value
is that it already has an incredibly large userbase.

~~~
Garbage
> Why would anyone leave Facebook to join Google's ghost town?

You don't have to leave Facebook. And most importantly (and highly likely) you
don't need to _join_ the ghost town. You are already there if you are using
GMail. Don't you know that after using Buzz?

~~~
riffraff
the question is: why would I _use_ it even if I joined it? I am a buzz user
but I never posted anything directly through buzz.

Why should I, the number of my friends on facebook is tenfold and does not
include people that once mailed me about a typo in my blog.

