Last October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin announced an initiative called "Features, not products" asking Google engineers to stop launching new services and instead focus on making existing ones work together better.The outcome - we haven't seen any new product on Google Labs since that announcement from Sergey.
Google has focussed more on improving their existing services like Google Reader, Google Notebook, Google Gadgets and Google Page Creator but have not added any new project on Google Labs.
This is in sharp contrast to 2006 when they were adding two, and sometimes three, new experiments to Google Labs each month.
On a related note, here's a feature-request for Google:
» Provide a simple mechanism to sync Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook.
» Make Google Calendar and Google Page Creator compatible with Opera.
» Give us an offline version of Google Reader, something like Attensa or Newsgator FeedDemon. Tris Hussey would love that too.
Find this article at: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/02/google-labs-gathering-dust-no-new.html
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
I heard Google is merging Picasa with Orkut for easy uploading of pics...I don't know the authenticity of this news.
Amit, I need your help..Yahoo! has messed up my albums on Yahoo! Photos...All my 10+ albums have disappeared...Do you have any info about this?? as in is this is a local problem with Yahoo! India or wat??
Written by
Mehak on 17/2/07 4:00 PM
Another one feature request:
Google needs to come out with a mobile version of Google Reader similar to that of Gmail, not just a mobile-friendly interface that needs a wap browser.
Written by
Aziz on 17/2/07 7:14 PM
It isn't simple, but this is the free service I use for synchronizing Google Calendar to Microsoft Outlook.
Written by
engtech on 17/2/07 11:38 PM
I was totally FOR Google's decision to focus on "Features, not products". If they are really strained on resources (I cant imagine why - they have thousands of freakin engineers, right?), then they should continue to focus on features itself...
At the same time, I think that some of the suggestions here can be counted as features, not products. Synchronization, mobile versions of online services, etc would be features right?
That said n done, this is what I would love to see:
1. Complete mobile suite (gmail, reader, calendar, notebook, search, sync, etc)
2. Google homepage for the mobile?
3. Imap support for gmail? (even better - exchange support!!! - dont know if thats possible :P)
4. Google Desktop suite (no, not that search thingy) - a set of LIGHTWEIGHT apps that give offline, syncronized access to gmail, calendar, etc.
Hmm.. thats quite a bit.. but come on! Its the big G we're talking about - they can do it!
Written by
psycho on 18/2/07 8:55 PM
I would like to see Google come out with a "To Do List" type application. This could either be done as a feature of Google Calendar or separately.
Written by
Marie on 19/2/07 10:02 AM