Somebody stop Google. Please.

Google begat the good search, and it was good. Then they rolled out more stuff, and that was pretty good. Gmail was freakin' awesome. In fact, a lot of Google's tools have a great deal of potential.

So what the hell happened? Gmail was fine, and they went and added chat. That's a cute trick, but all I can tell is that it slows things down, and has seemingly resulted in a lot more Gmail downtime. How many times have you been unable to check Gmail in the past 3 months?

Then there's this Google web page builder thing. Is it good? Who knows? After a couple of months trying to get in, repeatedly giving my email address, they still won't let me in.

Was it because I called them out on slipping half-assed, beta'd, not-yet-got-a-full-server-yet services out the door so fast they have started looking like morons? Yes, press releases are fine Larry, and it's great when you beat Microsoft to the punch (with Writely, which they didn't make)... but why not take a moment this year to refocus your efforts?

Picassa needs a revision. Most of their stuff needs to talk to each other better. That's where they could beat Microsoft. By integrating all the cool apps and web services, they could truly become a webOS. But farting around they are now just makes them look like a little kid who got accidentally drunk at the wedding and said something funny in the video. It's cool and all, but after seeing it a dozen times, it's kinda sad really...