Hodgepodge

I know, I know. I like talking about Google being ‘the man’. But it seems that everywhere I turn my favorite sites are talking about the latest addition from Google, how google is king of the universe and wants to deliver us from evil. I am wondering, more than a little now, if Mashable has a partnership with Google or some sort of major investment because I can’t read five tweets of theirs without at least two of them being about Google. Are there no innovators out there besides Google? Today’s news sites (InformationWeek, Mashable) report that Google has just received the ok to buy wholesale electricity. When they start buying water reserves (not that you can do that, that I know of) and islands I’ll really be concerned (it’s all sounding so very 007 to me at this point).

In other news, I saw a post/poll on ReadWriteWeb about MySpace that got me thinking again about the future of the interweb. The question was ‘What would it take for you to start regularly using MySpace again?’ My initial tongue in cheek response was ‘Change their name to Facebook or Twitter. But not Buzz’. However, if MySpace really wanted to make a go of it, the only thing that would truly interest me is if they did what I would like Facebook to take a stab at: building in a Second Life type of interface. While Second Life is mostly just creepy as it’s own entity, I can imagine a completely different experience with Facebook. I’m telling you folks, you heard it hear first, it could be massive. If MySpace made the first stab at it, I would give them a shot.

Finally, I’ll wrap it up on a Google note. Changes and adjustments to Buzz, to Google’s credit, have been quick. Not quick enough to get me using it, but I am glad to see they are making changes based on user feedback. When I find that they’ve made posts collapsible (lordy, if you follow mashable you can pretty much forget about seeing anything else on screen), they’ll have a good chance of getting me to take a second look. I would much prefer, also, of choosing my view, by user, by date or by popularity. Finally, if they really don’t want to make enemies they will not make Google profiles dependent on whether or not you use Buzz.