Google Wishlist

Top additions and changes Google can make to improve my experience.

As a long-time GMail user, newly converted Apps Admin, and Calendar junkie, my life has begun to revolve around Google and the services it provides. In fact I'd say at this point a good portion of my life depends on Google. Google consistently impresses and amazes me with the services they provide and the level of quality, intelligence, and design with which these services are developed. And of course there's the fact that most of these services are provided completely free of charge. I'm not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth and I especially can't complain about services available considering the modern state of open development and customization (if you don't like it: fix it or do it better), but that's not going to stop me from listing a few things I think Google could (should?) improve. I guess being spoiled for several years by Google's developments has left me feeling entitled to nag:

1. Get the Porn off Start Page [Google Apps Premier]
• Within a week of launching Google Apps for my firm, a coworker stumbled upon (it's really not even hidden or out of the way) the adult-oriented and office inappropriate content available through Start Page's Add Content feature. At the dismay of many of my users, I've had Start Page disabled ever since. I've submitted service requests with no response. And if it it's a big deal for my small firm, what about all the educational institutions encouraged to use Apps?
• See the long running discussion at the Google Apps groups (Feb 11, 2008)
• Mentions (in responses) that iGoogle doesn't list the inappropriate content unless specifically sought (and even then preview pictures aren't displayed)
  
• Another request without response (Feb 1, 2008)
• The same issue on the education version discussion page
• The appropriately titled "Google, Pornography, and Children?"
• featuring the first response I've ever seen from Google on this topic dated April 28th.
  
2. Shared Contacts [Google Apps]
• This was a primary goal of moving our firm to an advanced communications suite. Users wish to dig through each others' digital rolodex to find partners, services, clients, and sometimes even each other. It's great that Users are automatically populated in every other users' address book, but why can't we access other address books?
• Bummer. Do it better.
  
3. Improve Apps Sharing (calendars, sites, etc.) [Google Apps]
• It's great that we can share everything created within our domain- calendars, sites, documents, you name it- it's all shared in one easy to navigate service pack... but only if users show each other how to navigate to it through invites. Specifically, if a user creates a new calendar and makes it available to all users in the domain... none of the domain users will ever know it exists unless the creator invites them to use the calendar. And we're not talking an easy "invite all users" - the process consists of individually adding every user through the "Share this calenar" page. Manually adding 50+ users to a firm-wide calendar is obnoxious. Same goes for Sites.
  
• Useless:
  
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4. Universal Labels (aka Folders & Tags) [Google Accounts, Google Apps]
• I have Labels in GMail, Labels in Notebook, Folders in Docs, and Folder & Tags in Reader. Why don't any of them sync? Often the Docs I'm working with correspond directly to the mail I send and receive (some are even generated by the mail I receive)- couldn't the mail and docs all appear under the same label (or folder) in both interfaces? I gather articles and announcements in Reader that go nicely with my collection of news and articles in GMail, but I have to reference both separately when compiling a newsletter. I think Reader got it right with use of both tags and folders- now if they'd all just sync up in all services.
• While we're at it- sub-labels in GMail? Sure I can double-label things, but my label list is getting huge. Nested folders in Outlook are fantastic (one of the very, very few things I appreciate about Outlook).
  
5. Sites Navigation (welcome page, auto-links) [Google Apps]
• I moved my firm's internal wiki to Google Sites because a good majority of Sites functionality is amazing (user-friendly WYSIWYG, document searching, user access), but it's lacking in one area: navigation.
• When users log in or click the Sites link in another Google App, they're presented with... nothing. Or at least nothing useful. There's no start page or list of available Sites (aside from the ones created by the user or shared, see above). The search box is available- up in the corner- and users can click through to "Browse sites within [domain]" but browsing only shows categories (basically tags) which are optional for each site and fairly obscure. Wikis come with a welcome/home/start page by default which can be used to link to other available pages- it would be a huge improvement for Sites.
• I also miss the quick linking functionality of MediaWiki- create a link to a page that doesn't exist then follow the link and the page is created and immediately ready to edit. You can easily link to Sites pages (pages within the site you're developing), but only if the page already exists- thus I'm constantly backtracking to my index pages to create new links after I create a page.
• There's also the general disconnection of pages and sites within Sites. Linking pages between different sites requires full URL's (no inter-site quick page linking even for other sites within the domain or created by the same user). Images and files uploaded to a page/site aren't available for other pages/sites.
  
6. To-Do List [Google Accounts, Google Apps]
   
• I see this come up everywhere. We love Google for GTD features- mobile access, sharing, calendar reminders, etc. but where's the basic To-Do list? I'm using Remember the Milk and it integrates okay with Calendar and GMail through Firefox extensions, but it's another account and another service that doesn't sync with my other established labels, folders, tags, etc. (see above).
  
7. Accounts Integration [Google Apps]
   
• My Google Apps account also has a vanilla Google Accounts alter ego to take advantage of Google's other services not implemented in Apps. It's silly that I manage my mail, calendars, docs, etc. through my domain but have to create a separate, independent Google Account to use Alerts, Analytics, Reader, Notebook, and Maps. Actually, after the process of porting my calendar (created with my user and domain name before I moved the firm to Apps), I'm scared to see what will happen to my Google Accounts services if/when these services are integrated into Apps.