Google and the death of beta testing

Kind of ignores the work Google did in releasing Plus, which shows a lot of lessons from Buzz and Wave have been learnt. In particular, being very clear it's a "Field Test" (as they called it), inviting feedback on the site, and erring on the side of caution when it comes to privacy. (e.g. I think users were initially preventing from making something public that was shared to a limited audience...possibly overkill, but a good way to start things off). Whereas Wave was more or less designed as "Email is Now Dead, Get Over It" and introduced that way, Google have been very cautious and humble in their messaging around Plus.

> Buzz was rolled out to all Gmail users without sufficient testing or input from regular people.

Excepting use of the word "sufficient", this strikes me as pure conjecture. Was Buzz a failure? Undoubtedly. But I would be literally shocked to find out that Google released it without extensive user research. It's not an exact science (or a science at all, really). When people try to make new things, they fail more than they succeed.