I actually thought the most on-point part of the article was its suggestion of a strategy for Google's social features. Like the author said, if they want to have a chance at beating Facebook in the social realm, they really need a "social network", not a random smattering of social features tacked on to already existing Google features. There needs to be a single URL you can type to easily access this social network and easily navigate to every feature from it, and it needs to have a common, clean UI like Facebook does.

And moreover, it needs to have a big, well-planned release. I didn't even know Google Profiles existed until a couple weeks ago. If Google were to release an entire social network on a single day with an Apple-esque release press conference, there's a chance it might get enough people interested to have an actual impact. Doing things like a limited beta release is a horrible idea when it comes to social features, and arguably a major part of why Wave failed so spectacularly.

Everything they've tried up to this point has been completely disjoint and confusing.