Sloppy Google, Sloppy Apple

I have a feeling that Google's new gmail/phone feature came out of a conversation that went something like this:

Googler1: Have you read pandas vs lobsters? We're pandas, and we need to become lobsters!

Googler2: Pandas are googley. Lobsters are not.

Googler3: I think the cafeteria is serving lobsters today.

Googler1: The only lobster product we have is YouTube!

Googler2: Youtube is full of inefficient time wasters. They suck.

Googler3: No, they served lobster yesterday. Today's they're serving deep friend panda. Yum!

Googler1: People seem to spend the most time on gmail after YouTube.

Googler2: Email can be productive.

Googler3: Deep friend paaanndaaa! (drools)

Googler1: Let's let people make calls from gmail, and then they will spend even more time in that application, being social, and we will be more like lobsters.

Googler2: Then maybe we can bring back Google Buzz too. Or was that Google Wave?

I also have a feeling, that Apple's Ping service came out of a conversation like this:

His Steveness: Have you read pandas vs lobsters? We make beautiful hardware, so maybe we're beavers, and we need to become lobsters!

Minion: The iPhone is social. It's like a lobster

His Steveness: Not social enough. I need a new minion!

Minion2: iTunes could be social. Music is a social thing. And we could make it easy for people to get started by using Facebook Connect!

His Steveness: But then we wouldn't control everything. I need a new minion!

Minion3: iTunes could be social. Music is a social thing. And we can make people register with us and control them.

His Steveness: Excellent! Does it involve the web in any way?

Minion3: It needn't. We can have it all run in iTunes.

His Steveness: Will this make it opaque to SEO? Will anyone be able to integrate?

Minion3: We could build it that way.

His Steveness: New minion!

Minion4: No. Never

His Steveness: Excellent. Make it so

Ping sucks. The gmail/Google phone thing doesn't make too much sense either to me. Maybe I'm missing something.