When was the last time you visited Orkut? Anybody remember the rage that it was? Weren't invites actually getting sold on eBay? I did tonight for old times sake. None of the communities I joined have had a message posted for over a month now.
So I find it odd that just about everybody seems to be falling all over themselves about "Google Week:" First there's this "new alliance" between Google and Sun, and then there's Google Reader. None of this should come any big news. If you ever touched a Google Appliance, you know its *nix to the bones. And have fun writing any applications around it. I did and fun isn't the word I'd choose to use to describe the experience. That's why I don't have great expectations of Google getting into the so-called "Office Space." I've used OpenOffice. Never saw anything better with it as an end-user nor did I make much progress programming against it. Maybe I'm had too much of BillG's kool-ade, but if that's the future, I'll be happy to be obsolete.
Google Reader is very disappointing too. Uploading my OPML of 1,202 feed I read took the better part of an hour. Like GMAIL, its cumbersome to group (I'll probably never be comfortable with the labelling metaphor as a method of organization) There's no preview mode, no bulk-mark as read, etc. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a fanatic for JetBrains' Omea since it dooes everything I want with RSS and NNTP. I'm just trying to get myself to trust it for mail too.
And that brings me to my point. I really don't understand why Google is going down these paths unless they really are another greedy corporation trying to become the next Empire. If that's the case fine, good luck with it. But don't start do it at the expense of your customer base. Personally, I'd much rather Google put their efforts into making their search engine richer (in terms of APIs, more options, alerts working better) and more powerful (having different types of searches, filtering options, etc.)
In other words, don't give me another Orkut. Give me the best Google you can.