Where’s The ‘Daily Google’?

In a review of the new Zite iPad social journal — competitor to Flipboard — Mathew Ingram asks a killer question:

Matt Ingram, The Race to Build the “Daily Me” Continues

There’s one nagging question that keeps jumping out at me as I look at all of these apps and services, however, and that is: Where is Google? The combination of smart aggregation and algorithm-driven personalization seems like something the search engine should be all over. Google News has added some personalization aspects, but they are anemic at best, and one of the original customized news-readers — Google Reader — hasn’t really capitalized on that opportunity much at all (although it does provide some recommendations for readers related to new feeds).

The reality is, the RSS reader has been eclipsed (for the small proportion of the population who even used one) by Twitter and Facebook and other social news sources, or smart aggregators such as Techmeme and Mediagazer. Google has more or less failed to take advantage of that transition at all when it comes to news reading, although it is trying to add social signals to search. Why not take FastFlip and try to make it a Flipboard or Zite or News360 competitor?

Why doesn’t Google take it’s enormous advantage with Google Reader, Gmail, and search, and create the killer social news tool?

Perhaps they are planning to scoop up companies like Zite, Flipboard, or Betaworks News.me, and simply transition them into a Google offering.

But is Reader an unloved child at Google? Why has it stagnated as a mere RSS reader when the marketplace has been dribbling over into streaming social news? Google could have scooped up the interesting Feedly years ago, and integrated that technology as an alternative front-end — but they didn’t.

Is Google really going to sit this out?

[disclosure: I am an advisor to Betaworks, Bit.ly and News.me, and I have a financial interest in News.me.]

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