10 February
Lyons Has Seen the Google Buzz. Lyons is Not Amused.
Why, Google? Why take a perfectly wonderful email system and pollute it by adding a zillion new things to it? I’m not looking for more clutter in my life. I’m looking for less. At the launch event some Google exec claimed Buzz is a way to “find the signal in the social neworking noise,” but to me it just looks like Google is adding to the noise.
Why does Buzz even exist? Is it because Google wants to make my life better in some way? No. Buzz exists because Google feels threatened by Twitter and Facebook, and wants to kill them. Google has become what Microsoft used to be – the Borg, the company that gobbles up ideas from smaller rivals and cranks out lame imitations in an attempt to put the little guys out of business.
That is the biggest problem with Buzz — it was invented not for us, but for Google. So now, because Google feels threatened, we have yet another thing to learn, which won’t be easy because Google is basically a world where nerd engineers get turned loose in a Montessori preschool and they have no idea about user interface design and frankly, they don’t care.
I’m right there with you on 90% of that. Though, really, you can just turn it off and opt out.
the 10% disagreement:
and they have no idea about user interface design and frankly, they don’t care.
Would the uncluttered gmail you’re pining after have been so good in the first place if that statement were true?
Would the google homepage appear to only have two buttons when it first appears and only when you move the mouse give you more options be the case if that were true?
Although that last paragraph is an amusing and attention grabbing piece of writing that crys out to be sucked out and sent to all your friends, it seems hyperbolic at best and somewhat at odds with the company’s history, one built on a brand of simplicity and straightforwardness, which perhaps they’ve lost sight of in feeling threatened by facebook and twitter.
[I’m not even sure that that’s the case, they just need to look like they’re trying to enter those arenas. Google is an advertising company and twitter and facebook are companies that make services that from what I know run manly on VC funding, which may as well run on unicorn blood and rainbows as far as their long-term buisness models and profitability are concerned.]
