While Google's +1 service has been around for a few weeks, their result Google+ and UI improvements are more recent announcements. The launch of Google+ brought back memories of the ill-fated Wave platform that still exists but is dead in the water.
When Wave launched last year, I was excited at the prospect of finding a new way to communicate effectively with friends and colleagues, but a mix of factors made that impossible. Google stated that Wave is email, if email was invented today. A bold thing to say and it didn't pay off and Google Wave is probably Google's biggest failure. Google+ has a lot more promise, and I for one, would love to see it succeed.
One of the problems that plagued Wave was the invite process. They were far and few between, and while invites had served GMail so well, the concept is a little outdated now. If you're a company like Google, or Apple for that matter, it's probably too much to expect people to wait for an invitation to a service. Your reach is already vast and when you announce something like Wave and Google+, a lot of people want in instantly, if only to find out more about the product by actually using it.
Google+
Google launched Google+ a few days ago and to be honest, I completely lost it's launch in the +1 project, not really getting what the fuss was about. Once a few 'acquantences' started talking about Google+, I realised it was more than an extension of the +1 project.
Put simply, it can be viewed in one of two ways:
- A social network that learns from all the mistakes of Buzz and Wave (maybe even replacing the former, if not both)
- A real rival to Facebook
Either way, I couldn't be more excited about yet another social network. While LinkedIn serves a purpose and Twitter makes it easy to follow the information you want, Facebook has always been a bit of an odd one for me. I liked it's simplicity early on, but it's grown into a monster and I find a lot of friends rellying on it for way too much.
The difference between Google+ and Facebook is that Google+ has Google behind it. Facebook is Facebook and unless they branch out in to advertising, search, email and whatever else in a big way, it will be a site with a range of features. Google is now like an entire suite of software. A free suite, I might add.
Trust in Google?
For the most part, my email is handled by GMail, I use Picasa (and Flickr), YouTube and Google Docs. I look at website stats through Google Analytics and monetize through AdSense. I've even advertised through AdWords! I have an Android phone and there's a level of trust I have in Google to deliver me quality search results and an excellent user experience in all of it's products. This isn't always the case, but in 90% of my interactions with Google, I am a happy customer. If my interaction with Google means that they are able to serve me better ads, I don't have much of a problem with that. I've been using the internet long enough to be able to distinguish between ads and content 99.9% of the time and have enough self control not to be sucked in and buy things I don't need.
Google+ Android App
The Google+ Android app has already had one update since I downloaded it, but these incremental changes are fine by me if I'm getting features on to my device quicker. There are a few things I'd tweak in the app and the desktop version, like making the feed more relevant, rather than using as many options as possible to bring old posts to the top, but it's pretty good as is. Muting, being able to +1, comment and share are all easy and familiar and the Instant Upload feature is brilliant. Data intensive, for sure, but a great feature to have. How this effects Picasa storage remains to be seen, but maybe Google will be giving more away for free?
UI
Lastly, I'd like to talk about the small UI improvements. You've probably noticed them if you use Google at all. The new, dark, global navigation bar makes discovery of other parts of Google much easier. Switching between it's accounts is straightforward, and although it was a little crazy for a few days, it's working as expected, if not better.
The Google+ and +1 projects are tying in together nicely and I am enjoying making use of both, although going back to results to +1 something is a little counter intuitive and not something I'll be doing often. Tweeting results is more likely, but hey, Google know who I follow and improve my own search results with that information too!
I noticed yesterday, on my iPod touch, that there's a slightly different mobile UI too.
Previously you had a cluttered interface that showed Google services. Not very useful for a lot of users I felt. I certainly made use of this feature maybe 3 times in the last 3 years. Now, we have the above, a small list of links that are much harder to click on... however, if you swipe down on your device, you get the following:
Yes, I noticed this change while performing a vanity search, but it's a great application of gestures on a mobile device. The user gets more of what it is they really want but all the options are still there within easy reach.
More of the same from Google is more than welcome.
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