Feed2Mobile

I have to say I am loving and loathing Google Apps at the moment. I am loving some of the really useful stuff they are publishing for running your life and loathing the seemingly half finished permanent beta feel about all of it. I mean some of this stuff is just downright brilliant. Take Google Docs sharing for instance. You can have two people working on the same document and actually see them working in real time. Google Gears is a great new way to utilise the functionality of an online app offline. You can actually use Gmail offline, compose, save etc without an internet connection. Once you have an internet connection everything just syncs back up again.

Then there is the whole enterprise email thing. We have just set up on the Google Apps secure pop email server an entire business, its like its not even there except you have a massive mailbox that doesn't have to be emptied every five minutes. Add to this the whole analytics package, the upcoming Gphone platform and the Webmaster tools and you have everything you need to run a web business, for FREE!

This is all great but the thing I despise most is the lack of finish, you can tell its all been designed by developers, it all just lacks that intuitive polish that say Apple has. Now developer types will say "Oh but we don't need all that chrome", but I say you can have super streamlined design using basic HTML with barely a pixel in sight. Some of the workflows seem very confusing and without some developer assistance I was struggling to get these things up and running. I also love Google because they think about what makes our lives easier, not how to make a quick buck. They cut their losses when they need to and take bad acquisitions on the chin.

But again I loathe them because I can sense an emergent bloatedness that comes from a company this size. They seem to be losing their agility and ability to deliver finished products. Take Box.net for example. Here is a great technology area that Google should already have sewn up and probably will in the future, but Box have focussed on usability and visual pleasantness to give them an edge. Don't get me wrong there are still some things that Box could do to improve their service but hopefully they will maintain a nice growth curve and stay ahead of the big players.

Overall I am giving thumbs up for Google in 2007, they have come to market with a lot of new stuff and continue to develop their old stuff. We see ourselves migrating necessarily to their services which is a sign that they are doing the right thing. Rant Over.