Google makes another run at Facebook with Google+

Man, that Google doesn't quit. First they tried to topple Facebook and Twitter with the privacy-challenged Google Buzz, then it tried to redefine Web communication with the resource-hogging, poorly understood Google Wave.

Those didn't exactly perform. But Google's no quitter.

Today they announce Google+ -- with a simple slogan: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web.

Sure it's another corporate monolith looking to grab your data, but unless Diaspora scales up a whole lot faster than it is doing right now, having a Google-ian counter to Facebook sounds like a pretty good thing to me. (Note: I do have a Diaspora account but am unsure exactly what to do with it ...)

Getting back to Google+, here's more from Google:

Sharing is a huge part of the web, a part that we think could be a lot simpler. That's why we've been working on adding a few new things to Google: to make connecting with people on the web more like connecting with them in the real world. We hope you like what we've cooked up so far. And stay tuned, because there's more to come.

Like Gmail back in the day, Google+ is at invite-only status right now, though Google is happy to take your e-mail address to keep you informed as to when you can get a Google+ account.

To find out way more, go to this cool slide-showy thing from Google.

Things I see right away:

The "Circles" concept, in which you share different things with different people (like in Diaspora but unlike Facebook, where everybody's a "Friend" whether you're sleeping with them, or you were on yearbook together in high school)

Hangouts, that let you gather people together for group chat. I really like this.

"Sparks," to find things you're interested in to "follow," Facebook style.

"Huddle" turns separate texting conversations into group chat. I'm not sure how this differs from Hangouts, other than that it happens in a smartphone interface.

This sounds to me like Google Wave refined -- an attempt to stitch together the various kinds of online communication we have in order to make the often disparate parts if not more than their sum, at least more cohesive and useful.

Right now, sans invitations especially, there's no "there" there. This could be the next Wave (in the bad, nobody can figure it out, and it eats CPU for breakfast way), or a new, compelling paradigm for social interaction over IP.

More on Google+

Inside Google+: how the search giant plans to go social by Steven Levy (A very long article by the Wired writer, well-worth reading)