Looks even worse than MSN Spaces & where r those now? What does it have that FB doesn't & why should I move?
Google docs, chat, email and what not is the biggest problem of
Google+.
It looks just like a glue of everything Google had and not as a uniform platform built up front. It's going to be really hard to unify all these independently written apps into a single platform. Facebook on the other hand brought up the idea of a social operating system their platform is in the first few years of their existence and were building apps on top of it ever since.
But the biggest thing that Google is lacking is idea. Zukerberg kid was not just a great developer, which I'm sure Google has a ton, he understood the domain much better than anyone who's been in it for a while before him. He understood what people would fall for, and thus what his app should or should not have. Google ads features just because they can, Facebook ads them only because they make sense in the global picture. Linkedin required you to know person's email to add someone, now they let you add anyone you want, because FB does. Google translates its apps with translators, Facebook does it with its users, - not because they don't have money, because that's the way it should be done in a truly social OS. Facebook introduced News Feeds - something I would grant them a patent for even though I'm generally against patents - now everyone has them like it's something completely obvious. Remember what Zukerberg kid said when people were screaming about stalking feature the News Feed was? He said you might dislike it and we'll give you control over it, but we won't remove it cause it is essential part of the system. And he knew what he was talking about even with complete opposition from everyone else, now list me a single feature Google+ knows what they are talking about and not just copy it from Facebook? Google+ is going to be yet another failed a posteriori glue and Google should better concentrate on what they do best - search, and not on something they have no clue about.
Every company eventually turns into IBM - big, clumsy and lacking innovation. Microsoft did, Google is doing and Facebook will do one day!
P.S. ... and Apple too will one day become IBM. Big companies have too many people with huge salaries that make them afraid to take risks. That's why they only copy what they know became successful, putting the power of company's big buck behind. Like Microsoft, they bet on second-mover advantage, even though they have a choice to bet on the first. Start-ups don't have that choice: their only bet is first-mover advantage and for that reason they have to come up with something radically different, different to such extent that they can win over by the pure idea and not by money. That's what Microsoft had with Windows, Google with search, Facebook with social networking and Apple with user interface. After that they all went into other territories just because they could, not because they had a great idea. And Apple's transition to IBM will start once Steve Jobs is not there anymore - he seems to be the only one there to have guts to take risks.
Thanks to everyone who spurred this
discussion on Facebook in response to my
Twitter post on July 11!
P.P.S. Forbes:
A Eulogy for Google Plus
