assess the validity:
Google has two themes:
Theme A
most of the main google offerings aim at a particular end-user. The goal being gather as much info about their usage as we can to provide them with exactly what it is that they want.
Mail, Calendar, Spreadsheet, RSS Reader, Personalized Search, Homepage, Toolbar, Desktop, and Maps all seem to follow this theme.
Theme B
There is a new content-creation theme/meme in google that was really awakened first with Answers and then Maps, but followed up with their attempts now for Base, Video, Earth+SketchUp
This newer theme is actually meant to harness their huge userbase, but there's still no means within google to develop non-preexistent community. Example: both Groups and Talk are there to allow one to use one's existing community, in essence they really belong in Theme A and not Theme B.
I would tend to agree with Mike that there is something to the theory that google is Tech- and not Community-focused. There does seem to be a significant lack of focus on community. Googlers are for the most part left to experience a solitary existence, each in his/her own soft google-ease-of-use cocoon. Google has done little to allow all these people to interact in new and group-related ways. There is some kind of creative thinking about communities that seems lacking over at google. Good catch Mike!
[At first I wanted to say Blogger is a solid hole in Mike's theory that google purchases for tech, not community. Blogger seems to have been purchased for credentials first and community second, and technology last. I think most of the other blogging sites out there offer more in terms of technology than Blogger does. perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps Blogger has the widest appeal. Actually, the more I think about it, Blogger is different from most of these other sites because it is less into the collaborative aspect of blogging, and more into fulfilling the user's desire to blog.]
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