Wave, Jaiku, Dodgeball, Answers, Buzz... there is a common theme here. Google is a company run by engineers and their hiring process is designed to find people who can solve problems. It's been said before, but Google is great at panda tasks and horrible at lobster traps. [1]

The successful Google projects are ones that typically solve a serious technical challenge in an elegant way. Sure there were map sites and email services before Google Maps and Gmail, but Google redesigned them to work elegantly so you could save yourself time and effort compared to the other services. The same goes for web search, scholar search, product search, image search, web-based office apps, and application hosting services. Google didn't create these services, they just did them right.

However, building a site like Twitter or FourSquare, there's no real "problem" per se. It's more about community, and that's something that Google just doesn't do well because it's in direct contradiction to their entire mission statement.

Google is great at enabling people to accomplish things. They fail at allowing people to do nothing.

[1] http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-goog...

pretty sure the headline here should say "Extremist group succeeds in gaming Digg"

It's really funny because when I started working on the demo I had a full slide deck. Each time I practiced I eliminated a slide or two until there was nothing left. At that point I decided to just show the site and start coding.

If you like this, you might enjoy this delightfully funny, yet effective, introduction to calculus book from 1914: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf

It starts by ranting about uppity mathematicians and academics while showing how simply you can get your head around basic calculus.

> This was Google's moment to change the world.

It is Google's moment. They will change the world, as soon as they start controlling who gets access to what on the internet along with Verizon and others.

> ... responsibility we projected on them as being a smart company

That is really our fault not theirs. We are the ones fooled by their marketing and moralistic mission statements.

> They seem to be the first US company to happily surrender to the telecoms.

Google exists to make money. If surrendering to the telecoms makes money then that's what they'll do.

> I can't believe they're doing this. It's mind boggling.

What truly boggles the mind is the number of smart people here who are completely enthralled with Google, and believe it is a source of pure good in the world, fighting those evil companies on behalf of the little guy.

Google is a great company and I admire it for building such an exceptional image of itself in the eyes of tech community. It is a good company not because it saves the world or feeds the hungry, but because it makes money.

The ridiculously confusing interface to the Wave loaded on this page, plus the fact that it takes 30 seconds to load and then runs like a dog, is the perfect explanation of why Wave is being shut down. It's almost like that's what they were trying to demonstrate.

> you're trusted a stranger with a lot of money

"A stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet." - Will Rogers

The term stranger is a useful tool to prevent children from trusting shifty individuals. As an adult, calling people strangers seems to me to be a good way to live in fear and fail to meet interesting new people. Most people are basically good.

I don't think they cancel each other out. Digg has an extremely conservative bias. Half the stories on the front page are basically "Global Warming Is A Hoax Because Jesus Wouldn't Let That Happen"

+1 for paranoia. It's not just the price of the laptop itself:

* Downtime if I have to replace it.

* Hassle of getting something similar (US keyboard) over here in Italy.

* Worry of having passwords/ssh keys/etc... out there.

That's especially good with cute girls. Doesn't sound like a line (because it isn't), and often starts a conversation when you return.