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Overhype

by Dennis Yang

Thu, May 19th 2005 4:38pm





Google.. Yawn... Launches.. Yawn.. Personalized Google

from the wake-me-when-they-launch-gmessenger dept

At the media-only PR show today named the "Google Factory Tour" (to maintain the "cool, funky" Google mystique, no less), Google announced the launch of My Google (not its real name), a way to add personalized content first pioneered years and years ago by CRAYON, Excite, and My Yahoo. My Google (not its real name -- it's really called Google Fusion) is one of the first labs launches without the "Beta" moniker; perhaps the reason is that it's not really that revolutionary. Sure, there's drag & drop, but the functionality is severely limited. Unlike its Yahoo counterpart, there's only integration with one of the other properties that would actually use personalized data, Gmail. Blogger, Google Groups, Picasa, and Orkut are all woefully missing. Furthermore, Google has only chosen 4 sources for news -- RSS support (and Atom since this is Google) will be available "soon". Sure, all of these features may all be on the roadmap, but why not wait until more of these were integrated to announce something exciting? It sounds like the Google "Factory Tour" is much like the simulated factory tour in Hershey, PA -- just like you get to see a simulation of how chocolate is made, today, reporters saw a simulation of Google product development.

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  1.  
    identicon
    Precision Blogger, May 20th, 2005 @ 6:44am

    Mike, you've missed the great value of Personalize

    If I were to use generalized Google, then the parts of Google I want to reach would usually be one additional click away.

    As someone said, commenting on the idea of adding RFID chips to DVDs, "Computers make it possible to do things in half an hour that used to be entirely unnecessary."
    - Precision Blogger
    http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    thecaptain, May 20th, 2005 @ 8:31am

    Re: Mike, you've missed the great value of Persona

    I thought so too, I mean I use gmail, sometimes gnews and google itself.

    however, for me, Personalized google crashes both my firefox (its 1 release old tho...maybe if I upgrade) and IE (*shudder* not that I'd use it..just trying it). So right now its pretty useless.

     

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  3.  
    identicon
    Ivan Sick, May 20th, 2005 @ 9:35am

    I don't know why...

    Google keeps messing around with this silly little tossaway crap.
    Gmail is a good idea; Picasa, maybe. Other than that it seems like they're trying to create new needs. Which is not always a bad thing--but they're failing miserably. The desktop search is total garbage.
    They should concentrate on bigger fish, like the desktop or the browser or whatever. Hopefully these little junk programs are just to increase awareness of their status as software creators, but they're making me LESS excited about their forthcoming offerings with this.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    thecaptain, May 20th, 2005 @ 10:39am

    Re: I don't know why...

    "desktop search is garbage"

    The IDEA isn't garbage tho. I have a network folder that holds all my notes on all my problem tickets, solutions, development stuff etc...all in txt files and it would be great to be able to "google" them.

    However, I tried it, and it failed miserably..still waiting for something to come along that would do it tho.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Jeff Seale, May 21st, 2005 @ 5:02am

    Give it a chance fellas!!

    Y'all wouldn't be so damn negative about all this if it weren't for the coming of Google Web Accelerator. To me, that's the only black sheep in Google's barnyard. Heck, GWA probably wasn't even coded by Google in the first place, it was likely the work of some Neo-Nazis. Ya' never know.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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