Google launches Google Spaces

[Harold Mansfield]

From the official Google Blog:

Group sharing isn’t easy. From book clubs to house hunts to weekend trips and more, getting friends into the same app can be challenging. Sharing things typically involves hopping between apps to copy and paste links. Group conversations often don’t stay on topic, and things get lost in endless threads that you can’t easily get back to when you need them. We wanted to build a better group sharing experience, so we made a new app called Spaces (http://spaces.google.com/) that lets people get people together instantly to share around any topic. With Spaces, it’s simple to find and share articles, videos and images without leaving the app, since Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome come built in.
https://spaces.google.com/

I have to admit I'm not seeing the big benefit or the differences between this and Hangouts, Collections, Groups, and G+ Pages but I guess I'll check it out.
The thing that really bothers me is that Google keeps lurching from one social/share idea to the next...never really committing or improving any of them, and then one day they can just abandon it.

Does anyone see any real benefit or usage ideas that come to mind with the new Google group, social, sharry thingy?

[Brian Altenhofel]

To me it looks like something for casual but private collaboration.

[vangogh]

The thing that really bothers me is that Google keeps lurching from one social/share idea to the next

It's not just social/share. That's how Google and a lot of other companies operate. They have an idea put it out there and collect data to see if the idea worked. With some things they use the data to improve the product/service and with some things the data tells them not to bother and to abandon the product/service. It's why they release so many things under a beta label. It's not just Google that does this. Samsung does it with products. They release lots of things before they're ready and either improve them over time or give up on them. It's minimum viable product in action.

One thing you also have to keep in mind with these companies is what are their goals with the product/service. It's not always the same goal we think they have or want them to have. Sometimes with a company like Google which is all about collecting data, one product or service might exist solely to collect data and once they've learned what they can, the product/service no longer has the same value to the company. I would include FeedBurner and Google Reader in this category. Both were used by just about everyone, but they didn't hold value for Google and so Google stopped working on them.

There's nothing wrong with the approach. It should lead to a better group of products/services that continue, but it does mean a number of things are abandoned along the way.

[Harold Mansfield]

I agree. It just makes it hard to say, "OK, I'm going all in on this." Best I'm willing to do is dabble right now since I don't see any obvious need for it.