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.
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...