If the Google people are supposed to be so smart, how come so many of their recent UIs are lame?

Google reader is pretty bad. Google desktop is clunky (although a good idea in theory). Google groups is lame. Heck even their Google Answers sucks in comparison to this Yahoo Answers site.





In addition, it seems to me that yahoo, ask.com and some others are innovating more on search results. For example, enter in a name of a sports team (in season) on different search engines and you'll see a good example of what I mean.





Do they have too many programmers/engineers and not enough true, touchy/feely UI designers? Does Google plan to just live off their brand now?





Concerned Google stockholder.

If the Google people are supposed to be so smart, how come so many of their recent UIs are lame?
In my opinion, Google was never something more than a great search engine. In an early era where dial-up was more common than broadband, Google built a top-notch engine with a very light UI which made it an immediate favorite amongst a lot of users. What was nice about Google was that it never aspired to be something someone else was, it created its own identity as a very comprehensive search engine. However, offlate, I have started losing faith in Google, especially because their objectives and goals as a company seem very unclear. A chunk of their revenue still comes through ads, and their search engine is really the only intellectual property they have developed from the ground-up, otherwise everything else is either just an acquisition or a bad idea. Google earth was previously keynote, Google Talk has been built upon Jabber which is an open source technology for messaging and these were the "other" great ideas besides the search engine, but things like web accelerators and secure connection through VPN are just lame excuses to drive internet traffic through their servers.





Another great idea from Google was desktop search, but somehow they never capitalized on the idea, and today MSN has come out tops in this department.





At the end of the day, Google isnt running out of ideas, I think they are running out of focus, something that companies like Yahoo have and very well defined ones at that.
Reply:Google's main intent is for more funtionality with less regard to experience and User Interfaces. I would also like to see more intuitive interfaces from them. But the toolset they provide is well worth my loyalty. Remember, first and foremost they are a search company.





From Google's Mission Statement:





"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Reply:Coming where and when it does, this question feels like a veiled Yahoo plug, but I'll try to answer fairly regardless.





Google Groups is hardly recent, and this Yahoo Answers site is just getting started. Google has many, many projects and it'd be surprising if they all excelled in all ways.





The company shows all signs of remaining extremely competitive. If anything it may be a bit TOO competitive-- moving on too many fronts even for its prodigious abilities.





Its various sub-brands represent the core of its innovation this year. But innovation doesn't necessarily mean quality. It is true that Google remains first and last an engineer's company, and its newest ideas will always have a bit of an engineering flavor.