Well, as you may or may not know, Google has recently announced its latest creation: Google Buzz.
There’s plenty of buzz about it on social media sites like Twitter, but I’m stuck here wondering, as though I’ve seen something like this somewhere before. Oh, of course! Google Wave. You know, Google’s attempt to re-invent email, which hasn’t exactly taken off like some people expected.
How is Buzz similar to Wave? Well, Buzz is essentially transforming Gmail into a Wave-like platform, minus what seems to be the widget flexibility and real-time document collaboration that Wave has. In that regard, Wave is more powerful and Buzz is more similar to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Which, to me, pretty well describes Buzz: an addition to transform Gmail from a powerful web-based email application to a Wave/Facebook/Twitter hybrid. It’s Wave-like in regards to focusing around — and adding on to — an email-esque application, Facebook-like in regards to keeping in touch with friends and posting content such as photos and video, and Twitter-like in regards to pushing out status messages and updates to everyone. Yet it doesn’t do any of these particular things as well as each individual service, in my view.
With services like this and Wave, both of which are restricted to an enclosed environment (either requiring Gmail or Wave’s proprietary messaging format, respectively), and random ventures like the Google phone (which has had its own problems), I’m starting to wonder what they’re thinking over at Google HQ. It’s almost as if they’re trying to get a piece of every pie available and making it proprietary to them, instead of focusing on just a couple of pies and doing great there. The last thing I want to see is Google going the way of Microsoft. *shudder*
