No, I have not gone mad.
“Eating one’s own dog food” is a phrase used to describe a company who uses the products it makes. They are essentially their own customer.
I had this thought at the tip of my tongue (or fingers), and one of my favorite blogs beat me to it. Outspoken Media touches on this in their latest post, How Listening To Your Bubble Costs You Money.
There are a lot of Google’s offerings and features of their offerings that are just plain weird. They don’t make much sense at all. I’m not alone. I read and post to their help forums. I see others with the same frustrations.
Perhaps Google employees, some of the most talented programmers there are, use products differently than your everyday lay user.
That’s my guess.
Who are they using to beta test? I would be an excellent beta tester for them. I know a lot about most of Google’s products. I’ve tried them all. And I become sheerly frustrated with some of them. GMail’s suggested completely unintuitive “all contacts” vs. “my contacts” feature. Reader’s automatically following of users you choose to follow in Buzz or “blogs I’m following.” GMail tasks not tightly integrated in Android’s calendar. I can go on an on. I’ve written about it before. I don’t enjoy dogfood.
I’m not a serial complainer. At least I don’t think. A lot of Google’s products are on the verge of greatness, but are one or two steps away–which they don’t seem to ever tie up.