Nice title hey?  I like it, should catch some attention.  But seriously, I wanted to bring some of your precious attention to some failings I’ve noticed on the side of my friend and yours Uncle Google.

You see, Google always launches these wonderful “Web 2.0″ products.  All about collaboration, power to the users and oh wait don’t forget curved edges and pastel colours. ;)

But one thing is missing.  Consistency… 

Has anyone noticed the new features of Gmail?  New buttons, and new links to stuff like “Reply”, “Forward” and other features.  Except now the design isn’t consistent.  We have buttons and links thrown all over the interface, which besides starting to clutter means we have many options to do exactly the same thing.

An important point  I picked up from Tom Coates at the “Future of Web Apps” conference in London last year was Guessable URLs.  Lets make it easy for our users to find your services. 

But not Google. ;)  Some of the time they work it out: pack.google.com goes to the Google Pack.  But if you want Google Analytics?  google.com/analytics.  Hmmm, not the most consistent design here.

These are a few of the consistency issues I’ve picked up in the last few weeks.  There are some other issues that need to be sorted.  Inconsistent design causes confustion for users which is never a good thing.  Cmon Google, lets change this.