Where you see a personality crisis, I see an impressive commitment to growth on Google's part.
While their social efforts have been largely failures in past years, it's been clear for a long time that Google is now committed to a unified social experience with their products. And while they're still making a lot of mistakes – the recent Reader controversy, some of the recent Blogger weirdness – I think that with Google+ they've found an impressive hub that might serve as a central destination more appealing than Facebook's for a number of users. And for the first time in what seems like a while, they're iterating at a shocking speed that used to be synonymous with new Google products.
Changing once every 6 months isn't a bad thing if the changes are all in one direction. What impresses me with this redesign is it shows how committed Google is to change – the social reworkings in June weren't a one-time thrust, they were merely an opening to these coming extensive changes.
While their social efforts have been largely failures in past years, it's been clear for a long time that Google is now committed to a unified social experience with their products. And while they're still making a lot of mistakes – the recent Reader controversy, some of the recent Blogger weirdness – I think that with Google+ they've found an impressive hub that might serve as a central destination more appealing than Facebook's for a number of users. And for the first time in what seems like a while, they're iterating at a shocking speed that used to be synonymous with new Google products.
Changing once every 6 months isn't a bad thing if the changes are all in one direction. What impresses me with this redesign is it shows how committed Google is to change – the social reworkings in June weren't a one-time thrust, they were merely an opening to these coming extensive changes.