Might as well face it, you're addicted to hype...

"The lights are on, but you're not home,
you're mind is not your own" (from Robert Palmer's Marketing mantras)

I sometimes get concerned about the blogosphere's ability to be collectively objective as bright, new, shiny objects appear in front of them. "Google calendar, oooooo"
As Robert McRacken says "This kind of gossip is like crack to bloggers (who in this regard are largely like high-schoolers in older bodies)." when talking about why Google Calendar has received so much more coverage than Gdata

I like Gdata because it's new, shiny and it lets programmers (who I now regretfully count as a group excluding myself) do cool things with content publishing.
As far as not following the standards goes, well, it does implement Atom with extensions in a similar vein to the httprequest extension that MS put into Explorer. Look where that led!

I'm beginning to get a clearer picture of Google's plans, but whether they will succeed or not depends on developer acceptance of their platform.
It's a difficult thing to execute a strategy which involves dragging your customers with you.
Loyalty is everything, the community must support you every step of the way.

Does our love of hype and shiny new things blind us to the truth? Are we being manipulated down a path we don't see?
T'was always thus, I suppose...