Why Is Google Having Problems With Social Services

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Not only now, after Google discontinues Wave, the question is in the air, why Google doesn't have a major success with social services. With all their brilliance and free service, one would think it would be a piece of cake.

Mahendra shared a post from Stowe Boyd on Google Buzz, asking "Can Google Go Social"

I replied in a comment:

A good question.
Google definitely has some issues with maintaining social services. There are some projects which suffer from that.
Technically brilliant, but what where is the problem?
The problem might be the USERS itself. There is no, small little community, no small company in a garage, no ideologists.
Google starts their services as a big and monstrous company.  This might be a big problem. Twitter, Facebook, Digg, they all started as tiny little projects and as the community grew, they grew, and bound the people with a portion of a "my community" thinking.
If this can be archived ever from a big company is questionable.
The users decide with their feelings when it's about social things. Maybe good, maybe bad, but I think some very clever social experts have to workout a solution, or Google might never play a big role in social services.

Well, I can be wrong, but I hope Google will make, not a copy, but a alternative to Facebook, that will be accepted by a wide range of people.