It’s definitely easy to use as well (which is important), and that’s why so many early bloggers start there.

But the downtime, slowness and lack of improvements do become serious impediments to the more serious blogger.

Google Maps is cool, but I don’t see it being that much better than Mapquest. They’ve got the mashups and satellite pictures; but it’s mostly because Google gets the buzz.

Google Analytics is a GREAT product. And FREE. I think they put significant effort into making that work well, and giving people what they wanted.

GMail is a solid product as well.

So they’ve done some things quite well, but generally a lot of the newer stuff seems slapsticked together and launched too quickly. And I do agree with saurab in a way about it diluting their brand…

Additionally, Maps is cool but only really became more useful than Mapquest, when they acquired Keyhole(?) and added satellite views.

I do have a GMail account, but unlike others, I can’t stand the GMail interface and so have it directed to my Outlook instead.

Google Maps, Google Earth, GMail and Blogger are all non-search products, and I think all of them are very cool (especially the first three).

But, I do agree that of late, because of so many half-baked product launches from google, the services that do rock (like the ones above that I mentioned) are also getting hit from the low PR that the others that do suck (google notebook, orkut, etc) are sort of generating.

In fact, every new product that google launches that is not quite ready for prime time hurts their overall brand in such a way that people start forgetting the fact that gmail, earth and maps do rock big time.

anyway, as for google spreadsheets, I’ve tried it out and it is a nice collaboration tool, not feature packed, but works for general non-critical use cases (which is what the product is all about). I’ve done a write up on my blog… maybe you’d like to have a look…

www.techbytes.co.in/blogs/2006/06/06/google-launches-web-based-spreads heet-program/

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006/06/worker-bees-running-google-hiv e.html

A lot of people are applauding Google Calendar as one of the better ones, although not sure how they plan on monetizing it.

As for what the last anonymous person wrote about the 20% time, recently I read (wish I remembered where) that the CEO of Google noted that that is getting a bit out of hand; that developers are working too much on “side projects” and not on the core (search mostly). So who knows really.

IMO, i don’t think writely is that great but it is handy to have an online office and if that is the way it is going, i say bring it on.

Also remember that most of the ‘products’ are in still in private test and very early stage Beta (and FREE!) but given the ease of updating a single source code file, why not release very early and let your users hack it apart?

I have a Gmail account but still use Outlook and a Writely account but still use Word. The only products i use day-to-day are bookmarks and calendar (and Adwords, Analytics).

So, excluding search products, what has Google launched that you think proves they can launch products outside of their core and be successful?

*sniff* I am quite pale, but still…I’m not quite sure how to take that comment.

I’ll definitely stop using the phrase, “get up in my grill” though…for fear of comment retribution! *grin*

I wish you have already come across Zoho Sheet [www.zohosheet.com] and Zoho Writer [www.zohowriter.com]. They are fine when it comes to collaboration and managing documents online.

Cheers!

Andy, you’re not only white, you’re English. In fact, if you were any whiter, you’d be Ben. Please never say that again

Back to the point of your post: I agree. I think Google has been spreading themselves too thin for too long. Aside from actual search, all of their other services are 2nd rate. Also, they all take longer and longer to load pages because of the number of services pulling from the finite pool of resources. That’s right, Google actually does have finite resources. And as you noted: the products aren’t getting any better. They’re just the next Microsoft-esque “me too” company.

They purchased Writely to get into the online word processor game, and spreadsheets is next.

I would assume some form of Powerpoint online would be coming soon, along with other Microsoft-esque or “office-esque” applications.

I do agree that Google is jumping further out of their comfort zone and just when they say they want to go after MORE of the search business they launch something outside of that scope. And, it’s hard to ignore the louder and louder complaints about Google doing things “halfway” and launching too quickly with their products.

Makes for interesting news though. *smile*