Google Moonies

2:45 PM -- Well, like, I know that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is so cool and everything... but sometimes the Googlers are just a bit too into themselves.

Take Google Moon, for example.

When somebody at work first showed it to me, I thought, hey, that's pretty cool. But then I took a closer look -- not nearly as cool as I thought. A few observations:

• There's not a heck of a lot to see on the moon.
• You can't really see the whole moon.
• When you zoom in to the moon, the moon is real blurry.
• None of us actually goes to the moon, does anything there, or buys anything there.

I'm not sure if this is part of a new string of gimmicky, disappointing new features from Google, but it's an alarming trend. Another recent product launch, Google Video -- which we were eagerly awaiting in an earlier discussion in this space -- has been a total disappointment. It turns out that Google isn't really Googling Internet video content at all... It's registering pieces of content to its own database! To boot, it's picked some copyright fights with content owners. And if you want your own content there, you have to upload it to them (we looked into this for LRTV).

Sacrilege! How un-Google like. It's almost, like... evil. Does a $300 stock price eventually go to your head?

— R. Scott Raynovich, US Editor, Light Reading