God bless Danny Sullivan. You should read his latest post tonight in which he tries to squeeze some information — any information — out of Google chairman Eric Schmidt about today’s rather disastrous deep Google+ integration into Google Search. Unfortunately, all he gets are bursts of hot air.
Schmidt tells him that Google would be happy to talk with Twitter and Facebook about integration into the new Search+ features. So why didn’t they do that before, you know, they rolled the feature out? Well, never you mind that. Schmidt refuses to say one way or another if they did or didn’t. “I’m not going to talk about specifics.”
My understanding is that they didn’t. But perhaps more telling is the fact that they didn’t have to.
Both Twitter and Facebook have data that is available to the public. It’s data that Google crawls. It’s data that Google even has some social context for thanks to older Google Profile features, as Sullivan points out.
It’s not all the data inside the walls of Twitter and Facebook — hence the need for firehose deals. But the data Google can get is more than enough for many of the high level features of Search+ — like the “People and Places” box, for example.
I was browsing around Daring Fireball again, and saw John’s post entitled “Facebook Login”. He goes on to show an excellent example of technological ignorance.
Fascinating. ReadWriteWeb has a weblog post that ranks highly in Google’s search results for “Facebook login”. The comments on the post are filled with complaints from confused people who think that this is the new Facebook login page.
It’s funny, yes, but it’s a fascinating glimpse at just how confused many people are about how web sites and browsers work. They don’t use bookmarks, they don’t type “facebook.com” in the location field. They just Google for whatever they’re looking for and assume the first result is correct. All this argument over whether the iPad is too simple — if anything it’s probably still too complex.
For myself, I have to pick my jaw up off of the floor after having read some of the comments on the ReadWriteWeb article in question. Here are a few goodies:
The new facebook sucks> NOW LET ME IN.
Posted by: John Blair | February 10, 2010 9:47 AM
I WANT THE OLD FAFEBOOK BACK THIS SHIT IS WACK!!!!!
Posted by: Nicole Gray | February 10, 2010 9:54 AM
I was just learning,why would you mess it up?
Posted by: Richard Gordon | February 10, 2010 10:13 AM
wtf is this bullshttttttttttt all about. can i get n plzzzzzzzzz
Posted by: M arvin Scott | February 10, 2010 10:17 AM
And just to change it up, a voice of common sense:
This is what happens when people use Google to enter sites instead of typing it on their address bar…
Damn you all Farmville users…
Posted by: Rodrigo | February 10, 2010 11:57 AM
Now, I try to avoid belittling the intelligence of others — karma and such — but sometimes it needs to be mentioned. It’s also moments like this that I come to understand certain things about the world, like how Bush got elected not once, but twice, or the Tea Party movement. But that’s starting to go on a political tangent.
Let’s just leave it at this: the collective unintelligence of humanity does nobody any favours.
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*
