• TechCrunch, Wednesday, September 1, 2010 2:07 PM

Google using Gmail to advance its social strategy will be nothing less than a "permanent failure," argues TechCrunch contributor Adam Rifkin. "There is a basic, fundamental, deep-seeded inability [on Google's part] to put things together in a contextually graceful way that makes sense to actual (non-Googler) users," Rifkin rants.

As best we can tell, however, Rifkin bases his entire theory on a single incident, which involved his own Gmail service being interrupted after he failed to pay some extra storage fees. "When I failed to understand the procedure for the annual renewal, Google shut off my extra storage and summarily bounced all incoming mail with a 'PERMANENT FAILURE' header." Axe grind much?

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