I'm a little peeved by the author's parting shot:
"a world where nerd engineers get turned loose in a Montessori preschool, and they have no idea about user interface design and, frankly, they don’t care.
" Everything the author does on the internet was created by these "nerd engineers," most with no expertise in UI design.
Petty quibbles aside, though, the author has a point: Google's services recently have appeared to lean toward the Google-serving with the side-effect of helping Google's userbase at large. Of course, they are a for-profit corporation and this is to be expected, but I think everyone was hoping that "don't be evil" really meant "actively pursue the best interests of the internet, even above profit."
On the other hand, I disagree that Buzz specifically is Google simply trying to punch out other social networking sites. Currently there are three basic types of personal communication online: IM, Email, and Facebook/Twitter. GMail has already combined the first two, and I think it makes logical sense to add the third. It's certainly useful, just maybe not useful and better.
Petty quibbles aside, though, the author has a point: Google's services recently have appeared to lean toward the Google-serving with the side-effect of helping Google's userbase at large. Of course, they are a for-profit corporation and this is to be expected, but I think everyone was hoping that "don't be evil" really meant "actively pursue the best interests of the internet, even above profit."
On the other hand, I disagree that Buzz specifically is Google simply trying to punch out other social networking sites. Currently there are three basic types of personal communication online: IM, Email, and Facebook/Twitter. GMail has already combined the first two, and I think it makes logical sense to add the third. It's certainly useful, just maybe not useful and better.