On second thought, I should not put the ? in the title. I think it is universally accepted that Google Buzz launch was a huge failure. The concept is cool, and I somewhat understand where they were going (email is social, other networks show the notifications in emails anyway, etc.) but the launch itself was an utter disaster.
So let’s take a step back and see, GMail was launched many years ago as a beta, and an invite-only beta. Even though most people agreed that it was ready for prime time, and even though large businesses were using it as their company email system, it was still in beta.
Google Reader started as a labs project (“pre beta”?), moved to beta and then got out of beta.
Google Chrome, the browser, was in beta for some time, and perhaps for the first time, was hurried through the beta cycle and turned into general release overnight. But the point remains – it started as a beta.
Why then, was such a high-visibility project with such major implications as Google Buzz, hurried through its launch? Why was there no private beta? Why no beta at all? I am hoping someone in the Google Buzz team knows why.
And just like that, before they knew it, the risky move backfired on them. The launch was grand, with an event and everything but horrible events started unfolding. Some of the things that went wrong and were prominently discussed on the internet were:
- Just like Google Wave, Buzz was enabled as a rolling launch. As a result, a lot of people saw it and had nothing to do with it. After all, a “social” app needs social ineraction! So the first impressions were mostly underwhelming.
- Then came the outrage and more people started seeing what Google was trying to have us do – A public Google profile was required! Why? So that I could be found? It is one thing when you make your information available in the walled garden of say, facebook. But Google? No way. Especially because it was all automatically opted in, which brings me to the next point.
- By default, all the people you frequently contact on Gmail, were added as your followers and you were set up to automatically follow them. This was of course pitched as “you don’t need to do anything to get started, it is all there for you already”. But the problem was, and I was not a fan of this when they did it with Gchat as well, I don’t want that! It is one thing to add frequently contacted email addresses in the compose window drop-down but it is completely different when it goes to chat and even worse when it becomes a part of your “social life” without your consent, and automatically, and with no real way to undo!
- There was no good way to “start from scratch”. Meaning, I could not start with a clean slate of followers and people who I follow. I could unfollow very easily, but I think there is a bug, which keeps putting me back, perhaps because I was following some of the people on Google Reader. And there was no way to remove someone as a follower (“block”) if they did not have a public Google profile! What? So it is ok to set them up as a follower but there is no way to stop that? MY followers and I cannot control them? Kidding, right?
- Since Google profiles were linked to gmail email addresses, not only was a lot of information becoming public by default, but the information INCLUDED email address. That is totally unacceptable. Messaging capability is one thing, but exposing email address “as a design” is ridiculous.
- Not only that, using “@” notification in a buzz exposed their NON-gmail address to the world! Again, this is something that *should* have been thought through in design, but if not, it should/could have been caught in any sort of beta.
- I got sick of the initial experience very quickly, so I went to find “delete buzz” but there was no such thing. There was a disable buzz which only made buzz disappear from my gmail interface, but I had to go through several steps to clean out my profile before deleting it. Another important design issue, comes as a shock since it is a company that prides itself in the statement “you can leave Google any time you want and take your data with you”.
- There was no way to expand/collapse items or sort them in any way. Some items showed up expanded, and some showed collapsed and there was no toggle button. It is ok to have an algorithm to sort it “optimally” but at the same time, provide the option to see the river in some chronological order.
Hindsight is 20-20 so whatever I write now can seem like a Monday Morning Quarterback’s thoughts. Some of these annoyances are also being fixed rapidly, as we speak.
But the point of this post is not to talk about what should be fixed, or what should have been Google Buzz, but more about the fact that a product was launched by Google directly to general public, directly as “gold” version, with several HUGE privacy, usability and functionality issues.
Is Google feeling the pressure of say facebook with its upcoming WebMail product? Is Google unable to make any significant dent in the social arena (like Microsoft failed with the internet early on) so they feel anything is better than nothing? It is ok to believe in and practise rapid deployment, but it is very easy and convenient to apply a beta tag. Is Google trying to prove something to someone about their launches?
Whatever it is, it completely baffles me. And has increased my distrust in Google. I use Google’s mail (regularly), Reader (regularly), Picasa + Web (sometimes), Finance (regularly), News (regularly) and Blogger (regularly) and am actively looking at viable alternatives to make sure I have a plan to move away from Google if they continue this trend with other projects/products.
In some ways, it is up to us to realize now that Google is big and is trying desperately to diversify their revenue streams. Google Apps for Enterprise is one promising avenue but it does not have the power of millions of consumers which potentially directly influence the power of Google Search. But just like Microsoft started going crazy in the late 90’s and most of the 2000’s I am sensing a desperation on Google’s side, maybe as a combination of:
- facebook and twitter being completely dominant in social networking
- Bing constantly eating up search market share
- The impending Yahoo/Bing tie-up
- Increasing scrutiny from anti-trust lawyers, especially in EU
- Wall Street’s expectations
Am I saying this is the beginning of the end of Google? Absolutely not. They have too many smart people to let the ship sink. As I mentioned above, they have already made some changes to the Google Buzz experience and will continue to react quickly because that is how they work. I just hope that they don’t take us consumers for granted.
ps: I am still having an issue, after going through CNET’s walkthrough on how to disable buzz in that when I log in now, I see “1 connected site” but when I click on it, it gives me 0 sites. It is very annoying!
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