Some interesting comments by Eric Schmidt during the Techonomy conference.
From CNET:
Schmidt said that Buzz, by contrast is doing well with tens of millions of users, basically Gmail users that also use the short-status product.
"Today Buzz is really an extension of Gmail," he said.
From TechCrunch:
“The Buzz team is doing very well,” Schmidt said. But he noted that “we tend to lump Buzz into the Gmail success.”
Compared with the initial hype, I felt these came across as pretty disparaging remarks about Buzz. I am afraid of seeing it languishing as “just an extension” of Gmail.
To my mind, this also indicates the following:
- Google Buzz will never be separated from Gmail, what some considered the key to unlocking its true potential
- Google Buzz never was and never will be a competitor to Facebook
- Google Me is indeed just a social gaming network, as the WSJ had reported
- Google Me will not be integrated with Google Buzz
- Since Buzz is tightly integrated with Google Profiles, Google Me isn’t likely to be
- “Tens of millions” typically means 20-30 million. Thus about 15 to 20% of the estimated 173+ million Gmail users use Google Buzz.
This clarifies a lot of ambiguity over Buzz and Google Me. But that’s reading a lot into Schmidt’s comments, so we still have to wait and see.
