Has Google Lost its Mojo? Google Buzz is Another Misstep by Google

The last few months have been very strange for Google. For an organization that has been admired by many for their success in execution and product development, they seemed to have well, slipped a bit. Sure, they have continued to be embarrassingly profitable, and if anything, their advertising business has been growing and growing, but what about the rest of their business? Well, those efforts have not been nearly as successful.

In fact, if it was any other company that had made these misteps, the blogosphere would be all over them (not to mention, Wall Street). So what have those misteps been? Well, first there was the launch of Google Wave: (which sure sounded cool, but alas was not), then the very blah launch of the Nexus One, and then the whole "China is spying on me" episode, followed by the realization that in wireless, customer care is critical and now, we have the announcement of Google Buzz.

What is Google Buzz? Well, according to Google, it is what social media is supposed to be...at least from Google's perspective. What does it do? Well, some neat things like sharing photos with friends, interfacing with Twitter, etc., but I gotta admit, I don't see this as particularly earth-shattering. Still, you can decide for yourself by watching the video below.

So, what is going on? I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems like Google has well, forgotten what made them Google. In fact, even their competitors seem to sense that based on the latest responses to Google Buzz. For me, as an outsider, it is hard to say why this is the case, but my two cents is that Google is falling prey to two mistakes. 

The first, is the classic big-company problem of thinking they are smarter than everyone else. Don't get me wrong, Google is very smart (and has lots and lots of smart employees), but that doesn't mean they are infallible. More importantly, for these new lines of business, the details really matter and just being smarter than everyone else doesn't mean you have a good product.

Second, I think there is a real challenge among the vision of the Google leadership team. Schmidt, Brin and Page are deservingly gods in the search and ad space, but they have limited / no experience in wireless, customer care (until today, anyone ever tried to call Google?) and even collaboration / social media. Already, a lot of writers are declaring that Buzz is "boring"...and worse, out-of-touch with what customers want.  Personally, I agree. And in fact, I am much more excited about the recent update in Google Aps that allows you to share files!

So are the wheels falling off in the Googleplex? Of course not...but they still need to stop and rethink some of these recent efforts and new business areas. In business, past success does not beget future success and the recent track record has been pretty ugly.