January 7, 2008

An Unfulfilled Wishlist

In December 2006, I posted a list of the Google features I wanted to see in 2007 and you added 273 comments with even better ideas. Very few of your wishes were fulfilled in 2007:
* Using your own domain at Blogger.
* Ability to search feeds in Google Reader.
* An orkut redesign! Who came up with that hideous colour scheme and those pathetic-looking buttons? And the silly bevel effect added to all photos looks ridiculous!
* IMAP in Gmail
* A presentation app for Google Docs
* Google Talk on your Google Personalized Homepage
* More and better "mobile" versions of Google services
* How about the ability to open (in Docs & Spreadsheets) a Doc or Spreadsheet that is sent to you as an attachment to your Gmail account?
* GPS support in Google Maps for mobile phones
* Google Desktop for Mac and Linux
* I want Google to make their own Wikipedia.

The most frequently requested features and services were:
* GDrive (Google online storage)
* synchronization with mobile devices and Outlook for Google Calendar, Gmail Contacts
* task management (To-Do lists)
* Google Operating System (Linux-based)
* project management tools
* a lot of updates for Google Talk (Mac/Linux versions, groups, phone calls)
* Google web hosting

GDrive continues to be in the works, but it should be launched this year, according to a WSJ article. Google Calendar should add a task management feature, while the synchronization with mobile devices is currently limited to Blackberries. Google Talk will either completely move online or surprise us with some major new features; Google Operating System, project management and web hosting don't seem to be in Google's plans. The conclusion is that Google still has a lot of things to add from the wishlist for 2007.

16 comments:

  1. I really am pretty surprised that the mobile synchronization one is taking them so long, considering how much everyone has been hyping mobile integration/applications as the next big thing for a while now.

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  2. The contact manager also needs a complete redo. Follow the lead of Outlook and keep a running log of all email, notes and telephone communication with each contact, with links to follow up with to-do's, future calls and emails. A digital tickler file and relationship log.

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  3. As much as I'd love to see a Google version of Linux, it's hard to see how they would ever monetize such a thing. What I think is happening is that as people use more and more online tools the operating system they are using becomes less and less important and some version of Linux, or ANY version of Linux becomes "good enough" to support those activities. I don't personally need any Windows-only tools or any Apple-only tools, and I know a lot of people who fall into that same category (even if they don't know it yet).

    Leading-edge users are becoming (at last!)more and more weary of lock-in products such as iTunes, Zune (alas still many others). I see some evidence that this is changing thought as people see the good example set by Google in letting them get to their e-mail data, address book, documents, in more and more formats, without ever locking them into anything. People are asking, "why can't other companies do that?" The answer is of course that they were hoping users would never pay attention to such things, but now they are. The Scoble/Facebook meme has been a good example of this. Hopefully there will be many more.

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  4. > Using your own domain at Blogger

    Too bad that the custom domain by FTP has been broken for a while now 8(

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  5. "Too bad that the custom domain by FTP has been broken for a while now 8("

    Broken, or did they just discontinue it?

    I used this for quite a while, but was doing it more for fun than practicality. Hosting on a home machine running over DSL comes close to violating many such terms of service. On the other hand, why pay for a hosting server for your blog when Google apps will do it free? You can sign up for Google apps and leave all your other functionality where it is and have only the blog portion pointing to your domain name.

    They DO need a better export of your historical blog data though. The process they have now is rather clumsy.

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  6. Project management sounds like a job for JotSpot.

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  7. Don't you think that Google web hosting exists with Google Pages?

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  8. It is funny, but the last item on the wishlist might have come true even in the last year. I just got an invitation to google hosting:

    Hello,
    Dear Gmail customer
    After our free email services we offer you to sing up for our free hosting services.This service currently is in beta test.
    And we choose you to test this services and report us any bug you may find.We give you unlimited webspace on your own domain name you must only change your dns services to ns1.google.com and ns2.google.com and enter your domain name in our special control panel.
    Our servers are linux based and we support PHP, SSL (Secure Shell),FTP,Stats,CGI,Perl,Unlimited email address and finaly 500 MySQL Database.

    You may ask Why we do it ? Our answer is after you make your site active and upload your files we show our ads on top of your index page only for 20 days.

    Notice(s) :
    After 20 days we will remove our ads.
    With this invitation code you can only add one domain name and after you enter the domain name you cant delete or change it.
    Dont sell this invitation code in auction website that may cause we disable your account in the future.

    Your invitation code :
    [was here]

    Need help ? Hosting-Support AMP google DOT com
    Google Webhosting Team

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  9. Sorry Radoslav, but I kind of doubt that. I don't think Google would miss the misspelling of "sing" in such a message.

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  10. GMail does support IMAP now.

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  11. Viewing video attachments online in Gmail! How come nobody's said that already? Why not present gmail video attachments in a youtube-like window? We already have that for audio files... now add video!

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  12. Radoslav, that's a phishing scam which expects you to enter your Google Accounts details on a non-Google domain.

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  13. Whoopsie, I'm sorry, haven't checked the full headers :(

    (At least it proves how imperfect the Google mail spam filter is.)

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  14. There may not be an actual Google OS at this point, but there is gOS.

    http://thinkgos.com/

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  15. I would love the ability to search across all of my services, i.e. Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Reader etc. Sometimes I can't remember where I put something and now I have to run six or seven searches to find it.

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  16. I hope you ppl arent asking too much of google

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