2009 Wishlist for Google
Posted: 2009-01-01
Happy New Year everyone! Inspired by the comment thread with this post on Blogoscoped, i decided to put together my complete 2009 wishlist for Google. I hope i didn't miss anything! Let me know what you think in the comments
- Don't be evil!
Never forget this. Do not compromise this no matter how bad the economic and financial crisis gets. In the long run, this is why the world will love you! - More Storage!
MUCH more storage in all services that provide it and especially for paid accounts. What happened to striving for infinite storage? - A non-sucking Orkut overhaul
Seriously... - GrandCentral Update--
Integration with GMail contacts and Gtalk voice (& video?) chat would be absolutely killer.
Update: GrandCentral is now Google Voice! - Serious OpenID Support
Provide and accept OpenID for all Google accounts (obviously non-Gmail Google accounts can't do certain things...like use GMail). - Ability to merge contacts
I have way too many contacts for this to be possible to do manually, it's insane.
Update: This feature is now available but not very useful without a duplicate contact detector - Make Google Shared Stuff really useful
Similar to Digg/Reddit but done Google-style (better interface, tags instead of sections, region specific view, a fairer system, etc). See: my 5 ideas for Digg - Accept open formats
OpenOffice presentations for Google Docs, ogg theora videos for Google Video and YouTube etc, etc.
Update: YouTube accepts Ogg Theora already but GDocs doesn't take OpenOffice.org presentations (.odp) - YouTube (gradual?) Overhaul
YouTube doesn't look very nice and Googley, and it doesn't have any balance between features and a clean/intuitive interface. Also, decide how to separate or merge YouTube and Google Video. Will GVid search and YT host, or will you just merge them?
Update: YouTube is now for hosting videos and Google Video is now for searching, but a makeover is still much in need - Non-Flash Video Playback
Allow Google Video/YouTube to play formats other than flash (like the original video file). - Take on PayPal
Google Checkout is great at what it does but needs some of the key features from PayPal in order to really be able to compete. Then Google Base could add EBay and Craigslist like functionality (and expand Google Classifieds out of Russia). - Speak lojban!
Lojban has a lot of potential for Google in the translation department, and a lot of potential for the world in a bunch of departments (universal language, etc). See: My top reasons to learn lojban - Google Answers
Expand this out of Russia already! - Bridge with AIM
AIM was supposed to be bridged with GTalk, not just accessible through GMail chat! AOL was experimenting with Jabber/XMPP so pressure them to go forth with that. - GDrive
Or at least "accidentlly" leak more info about it's status/progress ;) - More use of technology aquired from NevenVision
Improving image search (removing the need for the ridiculous image labeler "game") and improving Picasa Web Albums-- automatically extracting text and shapes from images. - Mobile Social Networks
Merge Dodgeball, Zingku, Jaiku, and all that mobile social networking stuff [with the non-sucky Orkut?]. - Feedburener update
Feedburner really needs to be Google-ized and integreated with other services (blogger).
Update: Feedburner now uses Google Accounts but still needs a makeover and better integration. - Page Creator to Google Sites
Hurry up and make the migration and then start making big improvements to Google Sites! - Release MeasureMap
'Nuff Said. - Refuse censorship
See: #1. Don't be evil - Cross-platform everything
Make everything cross-platform (reduce the release time gap between different platforms, ideally to zero) - Free as much source code as possible
Continue and expand on your commitment to Free software!