Google is famous for its “uncluttered design” especially as regards the Google home (search) page. Well, yes, we’ll give them that. Not hard to be better than Yahoo! in this regard given that Yahoo! was a directory first and a search engine second, and in between had become a bloated all things to all people portal.

But there are some things Google really doesn’t do well, or at least could do much better in relation to design, and also in relation to the features of some of its core products. Here are ten of them, from a purely personal perspective as a user of these products:

Gmail

1. OK - they finally gave us themes this past week. But why the heck did it take so long? And why were users limited to third party browser add-ons to achieve this effect? How hard could it be? But more importantly than themes (I’m using Shiny these days, by the way), is the design itself. So this one is more of a past peeve than a current one, but is reflective of how long it takes Google to get some of the basics in place. And I still can’t pick the colors of individual theme elements myself - I have to go with a complete package (pretty though they are).

2. Why should it take me two clicks (or more often one click, a scroll and a click) to file a message in a folder (sorry, under a “tag”)? I have the list of tags in my left navbar anyway - why not just let me drag the message there, as I can in any desktop email program and in Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail (or Live Mail, or whatever it’s called these days)? Are you worried that the extra page weight will slow the app down? Let me choose! You already give me an option to use the “Older version” and an option to use the HTML only version on a slow connection.

3. Why can’t I decide once and for all what font I want to write in, and have multiple signatures? Have you just assumed that if I’m serious about this stuff I’ll use a desktop client via IMAP? Why would I do that? The way you’ve implemented IMAP with tags and folders it screws up my list of folders every time I try to do it - I get three different trash folders and no easy way to manage archiving items… Again, how hard could it be to implement basic email templating and a signature picklist?

Google Maps

4. Why is it that you can remember locations I’ve typed in to the search bar and auto-suggest them when I’m typing but I can’t easily retrieve that list later? And then your “My Maps” feature is entirely separate? Can’t you integrate the two, and let me easily view all the locations I’ve previously either typed in or saved under My Maps in one easy list? You might allow me to sort that list by geography, or history, or by various tags I might have applied (if you let me do that). The way things are now, I’m forced to remember some element of an address to get it to pop up again in the auto-suggest list.

5. Secondly, why can’t you do a simple integration between Google Maps on the desktop and Google Maps for Mobile? I’ve been wondering this ever since I started using Google Maps on my BlackBerry and it’s still a bugbear on my iPhone. Why not allow me to access both my “My Maps” locations and recently searched locations from my desktop on my phone, and vice versa? I’m happy to log into my account in order to do this. Your friends at Yahoo! figured out how to do it long ago and it really can’t be that hard. After all, how likely am I to have my desktop/laptop PC open in front of me with a wireless connection to the Internet as I’m trying to follow those directions I looked up, compared with how likely I am to have my phone with me? And how about a “send to mobile” option so I could send myself an SMS with a link that will open in the Maps app or a browser on whatever mobile device I’m using?

Google Reader

6. My main frustration with Google Reader is that I have a lot of my own direct subscriptions but also several subscriptions to other people’s shared items. Because there’s a fair amount of overlap in coverage areas between these various feeds, I often find that an item that is in one of my direct subscriptions also shows up in one or more of the shared items feeds. It’s possible that I’ll sometimes see the same item directly, again in the TechMeme feed, and then two more times in shared items. Although the TechMeme one is hard to solve without a bit more cleverness, it should be straightforward to implement a filter to allow me to just see the item once (with appropriate annotations to indicate it was also in shared items - perhaps along the lines of FriendFeed’s recently added Related Items feature which I really like). I’m fine with it appearing in each of the appropriate folders so I come across it sooner rather than later, but once I’ve read it once, mark it as read everywhere else too. Please?

7. Then let me filter out stuff I’m not interested in. I subscribe to Engadget Mobile, but what if I’m bored about all the stories about the G1 phone? Why can’t I request that Google Reader automatically mark all stories as read in that feed if they mention the G1? Give me filters with some granularity to do this effectively so I can automatically discard things I know I’m not interested in.

8. Then add filters to move items into a special priority folder if they mention keywords I’m particularly interested in, so I can read those before I trawl through the rest.

9. Lastly, let me find features a lot more quickly and easily. Several times now I’ve had to go to a Google web search (ironically) to figure out how to get a Google Reader Shared Items widget for my blog. I shouldn’t have to do this. First, you call it a “clip” instead of a widget, which means I can’t find it using your Help search function. Not helpful. But then you bury it in a totally unintuitive section of the Reader settings. Instead of simply putting that option on the Shared Items page, where it belongs, I have to go and look under Tags and Folders. Now, there’s a reason for that - I might theoretically want to get widgets (sorry, clips) for specific tags or folders as well so you want that feature option there - fair enough. But put two links then - one under shared items (which is the logical place) and one under Tags and Folders.

Google Calendar

10. Again, it’s a question of helping me find features / functions by putting them in a logical place. I want to be able to set whether or not Google Calendar automatically creates a reminder for new calendar items, and if so what the characteristics are. So where do I go? Settings, right? But no, it’s not there. There’s no sign of it there. So I go into a calendar item and find the reminder section. Is there a link there to tell me where to change this setting? No. So I go to the Help function and it tells me that to change this setting I need to click on the tiny arrow next to the name of a specific calendar in the left navbar and then select Notifications (not Reminders, but Notifications, despite the fact that in individual appointments they’re referred to as reminders). Then I can finally set default settings. Why on earth is this so hard to find? Why not just have it under settings where any sane person will look for it? I realize that people might want to set this differently for their different calendars, but this is the default behavior even if you only have one calendar. And what if I want the same behavior for all my calendars? Couldn’t you at least have a link under Settings?

Some caveats

First, I sound like a grumpy old man. I’m not old or grumpy, as it happens, but these are things that repeatedly irk me when I use Google products.

Secondly, as will have become clear from the above, I still use Google products a great deal - Google Reader is my default feed reader, Google Maps is my default mapping provider, and Gmail is where I get my personal email. I also use Google Calendar to track some personal calendar items. So they have me hooked regardless of these shortcomings. Clearly, they’re doing a lot right.

Lastly, some of these will come down to personal preferences - some people may love the way these things work at the moment and some will agree with me. But my plea is partly for more choices - let me choose, and if in doubt provide a link in two different places so I can find something quickly instead of having to hunt around your Help function (or worse, a web search) to find what I’m looking for.