Google Pages - this is a joke right?

With all that is said about the Google idea process how did Google pages (googlecities) ever even get considered for launch? Immediately the thinking of bloggers is that this must be an incomplete product, there must be something else coming - and I’m sure Google would say, hey it’s a beta. But being a beta from Google means something. It means that this project was selected from the hundreds of ideas coming out of Google as a project worthy of Google’s time and money. Google Betas have a higher standard to live up to than other betas, so:

1. Who is this thing for?

• Web Designers do not need this.
• Bloggers can’t use this as a blog.
• It’s lacking too many features to compete with MySpace as a personal homepage.
• It doesn’t have the personalization of MySpace.
• It won’t work for businesses (see #2).
• It doesn’t have the linked in capability of a directory site.
• I can’t really think of who this is for.

2. It won’t work for businesses (even local businesses)

• local businesses are moving to the web, but the majority of them are doing so by having a domain and website that uniquely reflects their business
• even at the low end of the revenue spectrum local businesses want something that is unique, not a template.
• of the 100s of local business websites I’ve seen in the past year and a half, I remember one that used a template, and it used blogger.

3. Is it 1990?

• I said in a post yesterday, that in a few years nearly every place that you can post data to online will have a feed.  Google pages shipped without the ability to interact, and without feeds.
• This reminds me of the member.aol.com page that I set up, and later the geocities and tripod pages that I set up.  This is not where the web is headed, it’s where the web has been, and moved away from.

4. Alienating orginial Googlers

• Google built its reputation by playing up to the tech crowd with a product that lacked all the elements of flashy design and just functioned as a great tech product. This is a complete reverse of what has made google succesful.  Google is now going after a non-tech-savvy crowd, but the tech-savvy crowd is always followed.  Tech fans won’t use it, which means it will never trickle down to the masses.

5. Being Beta - A Google Beta means something more than a regular beta

• Of all the projects at Google this was selected as one of the brightest ideas coming out of Google.
• Private Betas occurred in which people at some point thought that this was a good idea.
• There were versions that were worse than this that we never saw.

So, how did this ever come out?

Maybe I am conflicting myself, because this is obviously something that the mainstream has the technological ability to use (which I’ve said is always something to be considered), but there are so many options out there that allow people to do more that this (without significant overhaul) is doomed from the start.