A Yahoo billboard. Credit: peanutian

It's in vogue to beat up on Yahoo. The company was early to many of the key innovations of the Internet era, but has consistently failed to press its advantage.

Once you get started looking for the misses, the list just goes on and on. Yahoo got its hands on some of the earliest and most significant social startups, such as Del.icio.us, which allowed users to build up personal sets of bookmarks on the Web, and Flickr, a photo sharing service that's still popular today. It even had a technology in Yahoo Messenger that could have led to an early social network, but it never created a viable one.

In a recent effort to reinvent itself, the company declared an "open strategy" that heralded the launch of a slew of innovative application programming interfaces. Technologies such as Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) let developers reshape Yahoo's search results into experiments that could have resulted in interesting niche services that truly challenged Google.

Unfortunately, Yahoo has never known how to throw its resources behind these promising experiements. Though it still has a large audience, its star has steadily faded.

But it's not all missed opportunities: Yahoo still has the potential for innovation. "They have an embarassment of riches from a talent perspective, an incredible patent portfolio, and innovative concepts that, while not fully delivered in the marketplace, still point in interesting directions," says Gary Flake, who founded Yahoo's research labs before moving on in 2006 to Microsoft, and later to a startup.

Yahoo is still doing strong research. TR just honored Yahoo's Judd Antin for his efforts to understand what drives online collaboration. Meanwhile, David Pennock continues to do interesting work in "algorithmic economics," a field that attempts to quantify user behavior and monetization.

The company also has patents on search technologies—including approaches to search advertising—that aren't being used by anyone else.

And Yahoo has retained a bit of the strength and energy that its application programming interface drive brought to it. For example, the ability to program custom applications on top of Yahoo Mail still offers the opportunity to reach a large audience. The same goes for the Yahoo Application Platform, which gives developers the chance to deploy applications on the Yahoo home page and other popular Yahoo properties. Pipes, a highly praised tool that makes it easy to create mashups, is still being actively supported.

That said, Yahoo's energy seems to be at an all-time low. A tour of past TR35 honorees from Yahoo reveals that many have since moved on to other projects, including Vik Singh, creator of the BOSS application interface mentioned above; Rasmus Lerdorf, inventor of the influential server-side programming language PHP; Stewart Butterfield, creator of Flickr; and Joshua Schachter, creater of Del.icio.us.

To really make use of the resources it has left, Yahoo needs to commit to supporting the innovations it has acquired and developed much more than it has in the past.

Yesterday Technology Review got a handful of invites to Google's new social network, Google+, and we set about testing it out in the office.

There's something inherently strange about a social network that's so lightly populated. A bit like showing up early to a dance night—there's an overpowering urge to stand on the sidelines and have a stiff drink until other people show up and the party gets started.

But while the features were hobbled by the service's emptiness, it was possible to get a sense for how they will work once Google+ is fully up and running. To see a basic description and video of each of the main features, check out Google's blog, and our earlier take on the ideas behind Google+.

I apportioned some invites to family, friends, and professional contacts—and have been collecting reactions.

General:

Google clearly hopes to play to its strengths, making use of the data it already has from sources such as Gmail contacts. However, the debacle with its launch of Buzz has it using this data much more cautiously than it has in the past. So far, so good—most people felt the integration is a major selling point of Google+. They also made the inevitable comparisons with Facebook and Twitter.

Since I already keep Gmail open for big portion of the time I'm online, I could see Google+ as something that could cut into my Facebook browsing time. I use Facebook mainly to share information with people that I know might care about that information, but I often feel what I share is getting lost in the massive and rapid newsfeed turnover. So, it would stand to reason that if I had more control over the 'circles' of people I was sharing with, and I didn't have to go anywhere besides my already-open Gmail page, a significant portion of my time spent social networking might shift from Facebook to Google—especially if the Google+ reminders were a right balance of noninvasive and obvious (read: unlike Buzz).

—Mike Orcutt, Technology Review

I like that it's integrated with all of my other Google stuff, because I already use that for a lot. As for whether or not I would actually use Google+, it would probably depend on the proportions of my friends that were already using it. Currently, I use a mixture of e-mail and Facebook for these sorts of interactions, but if lots of people were using this I'd be just as happy to use it, too--probably more happy. Facebook is annoying with all the changes they keep forcing on people.

—Family Member

After getting over the fact that it was not Facebook, which took a few minutes, it seemed pretty easy to navigate. Chatting through it is kind of nice. I don't really like chatting on Facebook--I haven't figured out on Facebook how to essentially be "invisible" like you can on Gmail. Also, chat feels faster than Facebook.

—Family Member

I'm impressed by how thoroughly Google has thought about and implemented Google+. It is much better than I was expecting for a v1 product. On the other hand, if you consider Wave and Buzz, then this is more of a v3 product, and so it is perhaps where you would expect it. One of my students asked me if I think Google+ would be better than Facebook and Twitter if we consider only the experience and not the content (i.e., if they all came out today). My answer would be that I definitely would prefer Google+ to Facebook--which I have always found just too complicated to really make sense of. For that reason, I like Twitter. Simple is good. But Google+'s pervasive connection to all things Google gives it that ecosystem advantage. I do like the user interface--powerful, simple and clear. So, it will definitely be an interesting battle!

—Ben Bederson, Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland

I read earlier that Google was hoping Plus would fill some middle ground between Facebook (where people "over-share") and Twitter (where they under-share). I'm not sure such a middle ground exists or is at all necessary. When I get to Google Plus, it feels like a Facebook clone. It's not exactly, but much of the functionality of Plus exists in more polished form on Facebook.

—Kristina Bjoran, Technology Review

Circles:

Circles seem to be one of Google+'s strengths, but also potentially an Achilles' heel. Circles provide a more intelligent sharing and better privacy controls—a key distinguishing feature. But the screen inviting you to sort your social contacts into these "circles" is daunting and confusing. It's not easy to figure out how to add contacts you want to add, and the interface is cluttered up with contacts from e-mail who aren't on the service. That said, once you get going, the drag-and-drop user interface is pretty fun.

I think I need a clearer explanation of the differences between you adding someone to your circle vs. being added to their circle, and what those things actually mean in terms of using this application.

—Family Member

It has every e-mail address I have ever sent to or received from? This is way too many. Sadly, it does not seem to realize that people with the same name and different @blah.com e-mails might be the same person.

—Friend

I do appreciate that acquaintances is broken out from the friends section.

—Family Member

The drag-and-drop circle management screen is an aesthetically pleasing, intuitive interface, but the fact that it shows multiple e-mail addresses for the same person as separate individual accounts is a pain.

—Kenrick Vezina, Technology Review

Sparks:

Sparks is a way to discover information about particular interests. Most people didn't gravitate toward this feature right away, but I got a rave review from one friend who did.

OK, the Sparks thing is actually an awesome news aggregator. ... Usually, I read queer blogs to keep informed, but the "gay marriage" spark is actually just as good. It rolls in all the stuff I would have read there, and then some. Less awesome for, say, independent film and martial arts, but for Arab Spring? Wow—a bunch of awesome things to read.

—Friend

Hangouts:

This feature excited me as soon as I heard about it. It's a way to signal to your friends that you're in the mood for casual conversation online, and creates a sort of chat room on steroids. Within a hangout, you can chat by text, voice, or video. You can also watch videos on YouTube and discuss them with friends. The system is surprisingly smooth, with little to no lag.

"Hangouts" are by far the most interesting feature, and I think they have a ton of potential if Google can integrate even more services—like automatically displaying links, or letting people hang out while streaming Netflix or something.

—Kenrick Vezina, Technology Review

Hangout is where Plus shines. Having the ability to share video watching in a free Web app is fantastic, and with the competing audio input having little technical trouble, I'm impressed. That said, it has a lot of room to grow. Screen sharing seems an obvious step; it would make Google Plus useful as a social business platform, rather than just another social network.

—Kristina Bjoran, Technology Review

Mobile:

It's a bit too soon to tell for Google+'s mobile features. TR editor Tom Simonite, who was out on assignment, successfully used it to upload geo-tagged photos, and seemed to have no trouble accessing and viewing posts. Other aspects of Google+'s location features, however, were hard for him to test. For example, he used Google+ to look for users who were nearby, but the network was too thin to give him any interesting results.

Hopefully a Google+ app for the iPhone is in the works. Currently, the only way to use the service on a non-Android phone is via a Web-based app. The app is impressive, but it can be slow, and it lacks some important features—like the ability to snap a photo and upload it.

—Will Knight, Technology Review

Questions:

We'll look at Google+ in more depth over the next few days. In the meantime, readers, feel free to ask questions or add your own impressions in the comments below.

Both Facebook and Google have had their share of embarrassing privacy blunders. Facebook had Beacon, and Google had Buzz. But the most recent privacy scandal to make headlines—surrounding a Gmail feature called Social Circles that pulls in data from users' friend connections—has become a scandal about botched PR. Facebook, apparently gunning for Google in an area where it doesn't look so hot itself, reportedly hired PR firm Burson-Marsteller to do its dirty work.

The effort failed when privacy blogger Christopher Soghoian publicly posted the sleazy e-mail pitch he received. In part, the pitch read:

Google is at it again - and this time they are not only violating the personal privacy rights of millions of Americans, they are also infringing on the privacy rules and rights of hundreds of companies ranging from Yelp to Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn in what appears to be a first in web history: Google is collecting, storing and mining millions of people's personal information from a number of different online services and sharing it without the knowledge, consent or control of the people involved.

In an interview with Ben Popper at BetaBeat, Soghoian said that Google's Social Circle is far from his main privacy worry:

I'm a fairly outspoken privacy advocate and there are many things Google does that are really bad on privacy, but this isn't the thing that is keeping me up at night. It's something that I had never really worried about.

Soghoian told Popper that companies have recently realized that raising privacy issues is a way to score points against competitors. He continued:

The difference is Microsoft can do it publicly, because they don't have their own privacy problems. Facebook is no better than Google on these issues, so to make these attacks they have to hide behind these PR companies. If they tried it in public, under their own name, people would laugh in their faces.

Soghoian suggested that USA Today, which was the first news outlet to break the story, narrowly escaped being duped itself. The suggestion is plausible. The article, which leads with information about Burson-Marsteller, shifts to descriptions of users expressing shock about Social Circles:

Dion Moses, 25, a computer engineer in Ridgecrest, Calif., also wants out of Social Circle. "This is shocking," Moses says. "I had no idea that Google was doing this, and I pay close attention to most technology news sites."

The only way to disable Social Circle, [Google spokesman] Gaither says, is to stop using Gmail.

I'm not particularly shocked by revelations of the smear campaign, though the details are certainly fascinating. As The Register's Andrew Orlowski writes sarcastically:

Newspaper readers will be appalled to discover that a blushing, innocent maiden in Silicon Valley has had her reputation besmirched by wicked rival. Facebook's PR agency attempted to spin a blogger to write an unfavourable story about rival Google.

What's most important is that this story illustrates what a mess privacy is. Social Circles might indeed be something to worry about—if it weren't a minor infraction compared to the sorts of things that are happening all the time. Companies have access to huge amounts of users' personal data, and don't have to deal with much oversight about what they do with it.

Social-media researcher Danah Boyd summed the situation up well in a piece for TR last year:

Privacy is not simply about controlling access. It's about understanding a social context, having a sense of how our information is passed around by others, and sharing accordingly. As social media mature, we must rethink how we encode privacy into our systems.