Yeah. It would have been clever for Facebook, had they planned it, but for Google, it would have been known as "learning from history". But Google saw the successful recipe, and they didn't learn from it. I learned from it. I shouted, "You're doing it wrong!" at the first invite I received. And perhaps worse than that, they ignored the cardinal rule of introducing a new service: Don't piss off your users before they're even your users.

Encryption has a major flaw:
http://xkcd.com/538/

If it's obvious that the drive is toast, then it's the torture that becomes pointless.

They had a decent enough buzz. They had a decent enough product. They utterly failed on the delivery.

Let's look at how Facebook (inadvertently!) succeeded with its introduction:
- release the product to a small number of people who all know each other and feel exclusive
- release the product to another small number of people who all know each other and feel exclusive
- release the product to still more people who all know each other and feel exclusive
- open it up to the world and let it grow organically

Now, here's what Google did:
- generate a lot of buzz about a promising new product
- allow a limited number of invites, but allow anyone to be invited, so new people who join know only the person who invited them, and can't even invite new people yet. But they do feel exclusive, and can't wait until they know someone.
- feed the anticipation of all the people who are clamoring to get an account
- open up invitations to anyone
- reject new sign-ups from people who were invited once they hit an unspecified threshold, so that only a small number of new people actually signed up, and the only person each knows is the one who invited him
- open up invitations to anyone
- reject new sign-ups from people who were invited once they hit an unspecified threshold, so that only a small number of new people actually signed up, and the only person each knows is the one who invited him
- open up invitations to anyone
- reject new sign-ups from people who were invited once they hit an unspecified threshold, so that only a small number of new people actually signed up, and the only person each knows is the one who invited him
- eventually, people got tired of being rejected and didn't sign up, or left because they didn't know many people when they first joined.
- open it up to the world.

Did Google really expect people to just "try again later" after receiving an invitation and being rejected? Twice? Three times?

Major introduction fail.

Right, because all they did, AFAIK, is spoof caller-ID information to gain access to the voicemail without a password, and IT WAS NOT ILLEGAL at the time. So the police are charging whomever they can with whatever they can to make the public happy.

All Murdoch had to do was say, "Yeah, we did what we could, within the confines of the law, to get the story," and the whole thing would have blown over in a couple of days. Instead, companies crumble and lives are ruined for something that was in poor taste, but was, largely, a big misconception.

Is there? I read web pages constantly while developing. Much downloadable API documentation even comes in HTML format.