Yahooization of Google Hits Google Groups
The Yahooization of Google is moving beyond tags & bookmarks and onto Google Groups as ratings and profiles have been added to Usenet based posts. Philipp Lessen at Google Blogoscoped has the scoop (with screenshot) :
This is a nice “social layer” on top of Usenet posts, which Google doesn’t own, but only displays (they do “own” a Usenet archive as well as groups created right through Google Groups).
The “view profile” link on the other hand shows all posts of a person along with a calendar. This makes it even easier to navigate through the past of someone else, and it makes it even more obvious that anything you say in a public newsgroup may stick around for others to be read for years to come.
It’s probably just a matter of time before Google starts to intertwine their Google Accounts across all Google offerings including Google Local & Maps, Personalized Search, Blogger, Orkut, Google Answers, Google Talk and Google Toolbar & Desktop. Add integrated ratings of local businesses, search results, web sites and blog posts along with News stories and Google may begin to look a lot like Yahoo or other Web 2.0 style offerings.
Google Accounts are now used on Orkut, Google Talk, GMail, Google Groups, Froogle, Google Answers and probably others.