Brands play catch-up at Google
Always observant Michael Parekh offers a first-person account of the latest “Oops” beta release from Google, this time involving Google’s Web Page Creator.
The new service has been launched, but isn’t ready for service. When you try to create an account, it returns a “Google — Oops!” message. The message says: “Due to heavy demand, we are unable to offer new accounts for today. If you’d like to be added to our waiting list, please enter your email address.”
Associating one’s brand with “Oops” isn’t exactly good business practice. For Google, this is yet another instance of violating the rule: in brands, there is no beta.
These things do add up. They condition customers to be leery of first generation products, and eventually, to be leery of the company that semi-launches them.
As Search Engine Journal concluded about Google:
. . . they’re going to have to come up with a new technique of Beta testing which keeps users eager to have a chance of working with the system, but not having that system exceed capacity after 6 hours.
The question customers will ask: “Is it beta, or half-baked?”