With presenting a new product (well, a Gmail extension) on Tuesday evening (9 February 2010), Google has started a little revolution, most reporters and bloggers agree.
Google Buzz is the name of the new service, integrated into Gmail and going with the social community trend. Currently everybody wants to connect, create friendships online, upload and comment photos, exchange among each other, communicate and much more. E-mail isn’t quite the right way for that. Twitter is only suitable partially either. The optimum is a combination of everything — that’s why Facebook is so popular.
For a rather long time, Google has watched things happen and done few things to make use of the growing popularity of social communities. The last presented thing was Google Wave, tending a bit into this direction, but being ignored by most people.
That could be different with Google Buzz: Google combines everything that online users today like. You can follow your friends directly from your Google account, you can chat and share videos, you can integrate your flickr photo album, publish photos and comment on photos by your friends. The same is possible with Youtube videos. You can read Twitter messages and much more.
Google Buzz wants to become your communication center — and is thus a direct attack to Facebook, Twitter etc. The need is there to share things with others, even live, that’s innegotiable.
The question arising is: Will Google succeed in convincing the people of Google Buzz and distract them from other social community services, like Facebook. Google might well succeed, as Google as much power on the Web and many possibilities to advertise the own services.
A further question is how well Google can compete with their promises, as Google Buzz is by far done, but now integrated into Gmail step by step. You can use Google Buzz also on your cell phone. Sure, the “Mobile” web is the future.
If everything is solved well, easy to use, and fast (you can usually count on that at Google), Google Buzz has interesting chances to become successful. Privacy advocates however can start to clean their red markers, as new privacy problems arise with Google Buzz: Many things you publish at Google Buzz are readable by everybody, by the complete public Web — unless you choose to share them privately. Misunderstandings and difficulties are already waiting.