There's an attitude here (I thought nickblack had it, too) that says Google will beat Facebook. I wanted to make the argument that that's not going to happen.

There's an attitude here (I thought nickblack had it, too) that says Google will beat Facebook. I wanted to make the argument that that's not going to happen. I also don't understand why, exactly, you think Google has bad design. It has been a pleasure to use every Google application I've tried. Their design is better than a lot of design, but it's not good. I get pleasure from them when they're ahead of the curve: they've never made an app comparable to an existing thing that's a pleasure to use. Google Docs doesn't make text pretty, it has too much clutter, and it makes meaningless design decisions. Gmail has little nitpicky design things that feel like toothaches. (I hate that the messages get put into little blue sandwiches, and I hate the font they use for the writing in between.) The only Google product whose design I really like is their search, and that's because they got it nearly right the first time.