The is a weird release, to everyone else but Google. First, let us not forget that Google is a advertisement company. As killer as Google search is, search is not their focus. You can’t make money off search. You make money off of advertising, and Google is in the money-making business.
Looking at the Google Pack as an ad-revenue-bringing bundle is the only way it makes sense. Unfortunately, the Pack is the latest in a series of missteps that Google has made, and they’re losing their coolness factor (at least with me) very quickly. When we see how sub-par their and their are, and now this puzzling amalgamation of poorly-chosen software, one can’t help but think that the brightest days of Google are past.
Some thoughts on the pieces of the Google Pack:
Google Earth — ok, that thing is kick-ass.
Google Desktop — Having a Windows XP flavor of spotlight is appealing, but Google Desktop does it poorly. It really slows my Windows boxes down, the plugins crash, and it makes me vulnerable to the Internet Explorer nastiness. No thank you.
Picasa — you ain’t, but I suppose some retouching can help fill the lack of iPhoto on the Windows platform.
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer — IE won’t die unless people stop catering to its nastiness. Stop it!
Google Pack Screensaver — mind-bogglingly ridiculous. But, hey, it’s one more Google logo.
Google Talk — a great idea, done poorly. A universal client would be better for the consumer.
Then there’s the software you can install in the Pack that is listed as “Additional”:
Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar — why you’d support the old nasty gym sock that is IE, but also make a real, modern, browser available, is beyond me.
Ad Aware SE Personal — Every Windows box on the internet should have some anti-spyware, and AA is as good as any. Hey, if Microsoft isn’t going to build secure OSes, or protect you from the nasty things their negligence causes, at least you can easily get a tool from Google to help you out.
Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition — Really, really sad that they couldn’t have put some development dollars into an open source solution like ClamAV, and instead chose to bundle this subpar, expiring virus scanner. Hope the deal with Symantec was worth it, guys.
Adobe Reader 7 — Who doesn’t already have this installed? C’mon. Can someone verify that this edition doesn’t have the Yahoo! toolbar? That’d be funny.
RealPlayer — Just the fact that Google thought to add this as an option should turn people off of the Pack. Horrible, and bordering on malware. I’d be interested to see if Ad Aware sees RealPlayer’s goofy notifications as something that needs to be removed.
GalleryPlayer HD Images — umm, some more desktop pictures? Why?
Trillian — Here’s the universal client that I was hoping for, but, since it doesn’t do Jabber (I don’t think), you’ll still have to have both it and GoogleTalk running at the same time to talk on other systems. Why not just download and be done with it?
The bottom line is, I guess, that this is a great way for Google to become even more omnipresent, and more on the desktop than just the web. Adsense everywhere, as Leo Laporte said in a recent . That’s the only way this bundle makes sense. But, as software for people who need good software (that is, people still putting up with Windows), it’s done poorly.