2010-10-22

Will Google Me Ever Happen?

I wrote another extensive comment at Google Buzz on a post from Denis Labelle.
It's about the guessed Google Me, which was denied by Eric Schmidt. Nonetheless, the users seem to stick to that wish, that all services will come together and form an alternative Facebook, which I would very much appreciate.
But I'm not so convinced this will happen soon. Google is making serious mistakes in marketing their services and a lot of good things never took off.

Here is the comment:
Well, I'm not that optimistic. Google has to hurry. I love Buzz, I love Picasa (sometimes I think I'm the only one), I love GMail (if you want to count that in), and I certainly love GTalk. But there is a lot what's missing. I need a decent profile page where people can connect to me by the click of a button. I need to chat and interact more directly. And there needs to be simply more people using that service. I know, different people are using these services differently. I don't need a platform for my 20 real-life friends. I want to connect to the world.

I'm having a hard time to convince people even using Gtalk. And I'm telling you directly, it's because Google don't push their launched services enough. To stay with Gtalk, it needs voice for every system (Linux, Win, Mac) and most important on mobiles like Android. And not only that, video is the new thing, we need it NOW and integrate it on every desktop running GMail. As long as there is no decent standalone-program on desktops, how will a normal user wants to use it? Never, they just launch Skype, or use Facebook chat if they want text-only.
Same with all the other services. Google needs to push them as hard as they can. Buzz is great, and no one knows it. They read some Anti-Google postings in the big blogs, because it's cool to bash Google, and that's it.
But to be fair, Buzz and the virtual "Google Me" has a very long way to go, to give people a reason to use it instead of Facebook. There is nothing what can't be done with Facebook, but a lot you can do there, that you can't do on Buzz/Picasa/GTalk 
I'm hoping so that I'm wrong...