No Unity in Google’s Diversity

[Note: This is not a rant. It is a critical analysis of a set of widely-used internet services.]
Across Google’s powerful suite of web applications, there are a small (but growing!) number of concerns I have with the lack of conformity that would give them a significant advantage over competing rich internet applications. There are success stories, found in a shared login and a shared contacts system. But the more I have begun to rely on this shared infrastructure across services, the more I crave it. There is immediate room for change found in a diverse set (and naming) of tags / labels / folders, diverse profile pictures, diverse nicknames, and diverse storage limits & management.
Shared Login
The one great advantage with Google services is that you have one account. With that one account, I can log into and begin using any of their services with no barrier. A verbose and complicated account creation process is a barrier that often loses users to a web service, and the removal of this barrier is no small matter. Second-best is the LibraryThing approach, which requires simply a user name and a password to create a new account.
Shared Contacts
Another excellent advantage is a shared contacts system. I keep track of email addresses (and before Facebook Phonebook, phone numbers also) in my Gmail contacts. When I am adding new users to a Google Group, I can begin typing a name and it will auto-complete it based on contacts stored in Gmail. Sweet. This is the way multiple services running atop a shared infrastructure is supposed to work.
Folders
Each of these are awesome services, but there is one thing that they lack: a basic unity. A basic example is the idea of tags – words or phrases that can be associated to things in order to classify and organize them. They are called “Labels” in Gmail, but are called “Folders” in Docs and Reader. The whole re-vamped interface for Reader and Docs absolutely needs to be ported to Gmail, and that includes renaming Labels to Folders and creating a cohesive, uniform interface and terminology across diverse services.
Profile Pic
In Gmail, I can set a “Profile Pic” so to speak, that is my icon for my name in other Gmail users’ contacts. This profile pic needs to be shared across other sites – Picasa and Orkut are the most blaring examples of this. I do not actively use Picasa or Orkut, but upon logging in, I expect my user icon to be the one I have previously established and is already shared shared across Gmail and Groups. It should be shared across all services.
Nicknames
In many of its services, Google has a strong Social Network / Collaboration component (which is vastly underrated and underused, from what I can see) where you are allowed to set a “nickname” so that others do not need to recognize you based on your account name. However, this is not uniform, and is set in the individual application settings. After setting a nickname in my Google Account, I should not need to set it again, such as is the case in Picasa and Docs. Clean this up immediately.
Storage
This is becoming more and more of a hot topic, and there has already been no small amount of discussion on Google releasing their Storage Management service that allows a user to purchase additional storage for their services. It is critically important that additional storage be shared across all services – which is already the case – but I believe the next step is for Google to have the initial storage available to each user be shared. I have one account, and should not need to manage disparate profile pictures, disparate Folder names, and disparate storage limits. Currently there are individually set limits – 2.8Gb for Gmail and 1Gb for Picasa. I am not exactly sure what the limits are on Docs, but at least one source identifies 1000 documents and 100 spreadsheets. The storage for each of these services should be collapsed into a single amount and be binding for all of their services. The only thing lacking is a Google File Cabinet where I can have ftp access to an online drive that also taps into this storage space. With the release of SkyDrive, it had better not be far behind! Google users are faithful, but the year-long JotSpot fiasco has proven that we won’t wait forever.
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