I’m a huge Google fan, but it seems like Google’s been falling down a little bit lately. Granted, they’re richer than god, and damn smart too, but as far as I can tell, no one really adopted the much-buzzed Google Wave, and now there’s a bunch of back-lash against their entry into the social network marketplace, Google Buzz. As always, Umair Haque has the right things to say about it. Here’s a taste:

Next-gen products and services are built to fail, fast and cheap — instead of just offering tons of features. The flip side of bundling features together is that room to fail gracefully disappears, because interdependencies between them spiral out of control. It’s why Microsoft always made sucky stuff: bundling Windows, Office, and sundry other apps into one giant monolith increased improvement costs radically. Once upon a time, Google laid down the law: we’ll never bundle stuff the way Microsoft does — because that’s evil. But Buzz is bundled with Gmail so tightly, it’s the first thing you see beneath your inbox. Buzz makes it more costly to improve Gmail, and vice versa. Better that each was an independent service.

Read the whole thing here.