By Senior Editor – Kris Smith (@croncast)

Will I take a swipe at it? You bet.

Google should have paid whatever Twitter was asking to be bought out.

Buzz is a great product and something Google can hang its hat and near future success for competing with Facebook and Twitter – in 2007.

Three years ago this would have been one of the hottest products in Google’s arsenal and one that would have gained usage from the less than nerdy like my wife. But instead she has Facebook and Twitter to keep her company now.

Me, I know better. As a nerd this is too little too late in this incarnation. Buzz is further along than Wave at this release party but still suffers from all the same nerd-centric growing pains. These new products from Google aren’t innovative at all. They have nifty features for handling user interface components but they perform the exact same messaging functions that every other social network app on the planet does and less.

Most other social networks are tied into all of the others in an attempt at openness and portability. Not Buzz. Google doesn’t want to play with Facebook or update your Twitter account. They developed a product that exists within a product set that more akin to a corporate intranet than an internet web app for the masses.

If users want closed systems then why are all the social sites open? I can tell you why. This was all hashed out around 2007 when the first round of early adopters began to use these services and couldn’t move their data or friends between networks.

As a result the platforms opened up to developers to build third-party apps that could integrate data or become part of the larger system. It helped to build the infrastructure for these social networks to bypass Google. Which they did and they have kept on going.

Google has turned into the uncle that you meet at family reunions that is just a little too old to be cool any longer and has a little less hair than he used to back in the day. But that isn’t his real problem. What holds him back the most is that he doesn’t realize that the glory days have passed him by. However, there it’s nothing that a psychologist and a stylist couldn’t cure.

Google should hurry up and get those.

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