» Top 10 mistakes of Google

Google is one of the biggest companies in the Internet today. It has been popular because of its search engine. Despite its size and popularity the company also has its own list of mistakes. Here are the top 10 mistakes of Google.

1. Google Finance is so US centered, you cannot find good information about other countries. There are competitions that are far better like Yahoo Finance.Felix Salmon questioned “Is Google Too Big To Fail?”.According to a blogpost “Minor disadvantages of Google Finance are that it doesn’t show all the popular ratios that Yahoo does, such as the PEG. For foreign stocks, it shows profit margin and operating margin information, but not the P/E or P/S”
2. Google Checkout is yet another mistake from Google. It is half-baked and it is so limited. Why should people use this when you have Paypal which offers more options.You check some advantages and disadvantages of Google Checkout vs Paypal.
3. Picasa is a good photo manager but Picasa Web album is definitely a bad idea. The user interface is confusing.I personally like to spend $25 on Flickr Pro rather than using Picasa.
4. Google Web Accelerator is another bad product from Google. It has many privacy issues. It also causes problems with some websites not loading properly.37signals reports in fact that the Google Web Accelerator “Google is essentially clicking every link on the page — including links like “delete this” or “cancel that.” And to make matters worse, Google ignores the Javascript confirmations“.Moreover checkout some “Hard facts about Google’s Web Accelerator”.
5. Google Video is also a bad idea. It did not feature popular TV shows. And it is so slow.Have a look on Why Google Video Will Fail and
6. Google Desktop is posing security threats among users. The software pulls personal data from your PC.
7. There are too many instant messaging software out there. Google Talk is too late.More over foxnews recently discloses that ‘ViddyHo’ Virus Spreads Through Google Chat”.In case you have the time ,look over the some interesting facts about Google Talk.
8. Gmail is recently experiencing outage and account inaccessibility. Is happens from time to time and Google has not yet addressed it until now. This will definitely tarnish the image of Google.You may check about the latest problem of gmail here. Stan Schroeder of Mashable published an article stating “gmail down panic mode on”.
9. Google Maps is another brilliant concept but it can also help terrorists with bad intentions do their strategic planning.May be you should know that “Terrorist Use of Google Earth Raises Security Fears” and “Google Maps aids terrorists”.Every technology have its own flaws but it can also be recovered.Their are so many severe questions on national securities.For example latest mumbai bomb blast terrorist “Kasab” is in arthur road jail so will google remove arthur road from its map?
10. The Chrome is yet another web browser. Who needs another one? Google already partnered with Mozilla for the Firefox so there’s no point in adding another web browser.John Brandon says that “Is Chrome the first epic fail at Google?”You should also read the chrome fail discussion on the reddit.More over this is the comment from a user in a Google groups
    

    I just updated Google Chrome to the latest version, RC 1 i.e. non-
    beta. And now my Gtalk within Orkut states that it doesn’t work with
    this browser. Come on, both are Google products… They should work
    better together, not fail on such an epic scale.

    Update: Google is continuously working on project “chrome” and come up with some new features. I wish to remove this point after extensions updates in the Chrome final release. (on beta and developer versions it have extensions features and we also developed Google Chrome Extensions for Gtalk , checking IP and Speed Test )

Last but not least newowin.net say’s that “Google to kill 6 of its failed projects” these are listed as follows:

• Google Video
• Google Catalog Search
• Google Notebook
• Dodgeball
• Jaiku
• Google Mashup Editor

The top 10 mistakes of Google are easy to correct. With the way the company works these can be done within months.I just remember this quote (find in a webmaster  forum )

Google seem to want to be the next Yahoo and Yahoo seem to want to be the next Google

Note:Help and suggestions to improve this articles are always invited.

Update on 18 march,2009:

Google Lively is addition in the list of Google fails.
About Google Lively : Lively was a network of avatars and virtual rooms created and decorated by its users. Google launched Lively on July 8, 2008 as an experiment in providing people with more ways to express themselves on the Web.