I have been reading your blog for a few days and others like louis gray who have started to talk about this. i think from that perspective friendfeed looks pretty interesting.

Why?

Google is a search and advertising company. As much as we like to personify the brand – “Google does this”, “Google thinks that”, etc. – it is ultimately a business and the individuals running the business will tend to make decisions that maximize revenue or minimize costs. It won’t always do this, but it will tend to, especially if it’s a public company as Google is.

Once a business comes across and implements an idea that generates a buckload of revenue, the decision-making process of that company tends to stifle innovation beyond this idea out of fear that these newer ideas will “cannibalize” their cash cow or will take “resources” away from making their cash cow even fatter. Again this isn’t always the case, it’s a simplification, but it’s baked into the DNA of all businesses and is difficult to avoid. Google is no exception. Larry and Sergey identified an opportunity to build a better search engine, and eventually found a brilliant revenue stream in text-based contextual advertising. That’s Google’s big idea. Their teams executed on this idea extremely well, and now the business is swimming in cash.

We should actually expect that Google has no more ideas.

The fact that individuals push their ideas within the company, get buy-in, and eventually launch – like the Tasks team – makes Google unique and interesting, and is a testament to the perserverence of those individuals.

But if we’re looking to Google to be the one true source of innovation, we’re looking in the wrong place.