Google isn't Buzzing

Yesterday GoogleBuzz came into my life, and 24 hours later I'm ready to say goodbye. Unceremoniously.

If you asked me a month ago I would have said Google is primed to take over the world. I even mentioned it in my post yesterday regarding their great Super Bowl ad - that was before I played with Buzz and really had time to think about the company. Now, I really think that Google still has that potential - but Google is too all over the place to succeed right now.

My problem with GoogleBuzz is the fact that I don't REALLY use GMail. I have a GMail account, but all my mail goes to my BlackBerry/Mail Client. Whenever I actually log on GMail, it's a mess because it doesn't seem to sync up. So given that alone, I NEVER want to go to the GMail site. But to use Buzz I would have to see it every day. Plus everything that's "Buzzed" is already sent to my e-mail (aka Blackberry/Mail) - making my GMail even more cluttered than before.

The Internet is creating TOO many outlets for us to sign up for. I could probably think of 20 things I've signed up for in the past five years where I have to connect with "friends". Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, AIM, Skype, BBM (okay so not an Internet, but same deal,) Foursquare, Xbox/PSN/Wii, Netflix, any type of message board, etc. I think I proved my point. So my question is why would I want to add GMail/G-Chat do that ever-growing list?

I understand their intended goal - to clear the clutter. I'm just not sure that it quite accomplishes that task. Maybe it's because I've organized my TweetDeck well enough that I feel like I've already done it for Twitter, I'm alright with my Facebook (although the new layout is a struggle,) and I'm able to talk to my contacts on AIM/BBM. I feel relatively organized and less cluttered than usual. If anything, by getting e-mails on everything my "G-Friends" are "buzzing" about, it really clutters my inbox.

I think Google's goal is to somewhat brainwash us into using everything Google. Google Mail. Google Chat. Google Buzz. Google Reader. Google Cereal. Okay so that last one was a joke, but if they had it, we would probably eat it up - pun intended.

I'm not saying that Google Buzz sucks. I just think it needs some fine-tuning. If it came out 3-4 years ago - before Twitter, before Facebook blew up, they would of been onto something. By implementing it now, it feels more like an RSS feed of your friend updates - which are the same as Twitter, without the 140 character limit. I'm just not sure it's necessary.

Google really still has so much potential but needs better execution. Google Wave seems to be a flop - nobody can figure out how the hell to use it, and they don't have enough friends to create Waves with. I recently just bought my own web domain from Google, but can't figure out how to set that up either - although most of that is probably because I'm not very HTML savvy. Google has all these great things that no one really knows how to use. They recently announced a plan to launch it's own ISP. They've talked about Google Voice for a bit - something else that at least I know I can't personally figure out. AdWords. There's a bunch out there.

I used to really like Google, and most of the time I still do, but I really think there are times when they hide behind the "don't be evil" mantra to reveal that they actually are "evil" in terms of trying to take over everyone else. There's definitely a "war" brewing between Google and Facebook. Everyone is afraid of Google. Apple, Blackberry, and Facebook all have tried to implement using Bing rather than Google because Google is threatening to take over their respective mediums - why support the 'enemy'. Suddenly Microsoft isn't the big bad 5,000-pound gorilla anymore. Who would of ever seen that coming?

Google can still do it. They can fix Buzz. I've heard great things about Wave, but no one I personally know either knows about it or can use it. Maybe because of Buzz we will start to see a transition to using their website as the home base for all our browsing/social needs. They just need to re-calibrate their vision to be more cohesive and work with us instead of rolling out new programs every few months.