I like Google, but they seriously need to put more effort into customer service. I used Google Checkout after it first launched. When you had a problem the only customer service option was Google Groups. There were basic problems, like the inability to view more than one page of transaction history, that went unfixed for months. After that experience, I decided I wouldn't rely on them for core business functions beyond AdWords.
If I've said it once, I've said it 1000 times: Google does everything 75%. They break into a market just to be in it and then they set it aside and move on. Nothing is ever finished and polished with Google aside from search, the one thing they really nail. If Google treated each of its products--or even each of its core products--the same way that Apple treats its few products, Google would run the world.
It's a Les Grossman "scorched earth MFer" policy. They build super-sexy beta products or buy hot startups (Wave, Nexus One, Android Marketplace, Dodgeball) and lure in devs and consumers, then get bored like a cat playing with a half-dead mouse and move onto the next shiny competitor up the block.
Meanwhile, no one wants to go into the space that they take up for fear of getting gently and graciously crushed in marketshare, and no one wants that market after they've left it, for fear that "if Google can't make money on it, we can't either". For example, if it wasn't for FourSquare, location-based social SMS would've been dead after Dodgeball; no VC would've touched it after Google bought it and failed.
Yeah, several years ago I go stuck trying to integrate a Google Search Appliance that a client went off and purchased on their own. The documentation was a joke and the code samples were sparse. The only support you got was a Google Group. Pretty sad considering it cost 20k.
