I am getting really amused by the tone of the Google blog. I blogged about this recently when the froogle announcement came out and they have done it again today.

If you read the gmail / gtalk announcement, it follows the same tone as the other product announcements: " I am an engineer, someone came and said: dude, why dont we merge gmail and gtalk? I said right on! so we worked real hard and stuff and here it is. Cool huh?"

Please. stop. the. BS.

I am not questioning the value for users but anyone who has spent a little time working on the web knows that the gmail / gtalk integration will also you to do two things:

• Build inventory for placing more ads. (How about live ads that change as you chat?)
• Refine the personomies of your users and the relationship between them. 

But Google keeps on pretending that innovation and revenue happen by accident. Just like that. You put a bunch of engineers together and you dont need a business strategy. They still want us to believe that they dont have a grand plan for consolidating all user information, interactions into a massive targeting and monetization engine. Come on!

Or maybe not. Maybe I am wrong, maybe they are just a bunch of geeks playing around, feeling and getting lucky. But in that case, why didn't I see a cool post about increasing your ad's font size to make more money? You know something like:
My mom wanted to buy a plane ticket to come see me for the celebration of my 12th PHD and she told me she could not read the ads on google. So, after my massage, I increased the font size and bam, she found a ticket. (and we doubled the average click through rate).
No?

personomies, google, gtalk, gmail