First and foremost, I love a lot of what Google has to offer, particularly Gmail and Reader.

Recently, Google released a new Gmail version to the world with many wonderful upgrades. One thing however, left me scratching my head. I noticed they replaced a regular old HTML <select> tag with a smaller drop-down widget.

Apart from the apparent visual improvement, it doesn’t seem to be all that better and innovative to me. In fact, I’d imagine it suffers a bit as far as accessibility goes.

Growing pains

Being a daily Reader user, I also noted that their drop-downs are pretty custom as well. What’s interesting, is that they have a completely different look from Gmail’s.

I dug deeper and found that drop-downs across most of Google’s web apps did not look much alike. In fact, sometimes there was more than one look within the same app!

These inconsistencies are most likely attributed to Google’s exceptional growth. It’s huge now and all big companies have the same struggles. Yahoo is no different and I see this first hand almost everyday at work.

Plenty of examples

Another one from Gmail

Analytics – my favorite

Calendar

Docs

Groups

Picasa

Reader

Conclusion

Google has done a pretty good job keeping the main look similar from from one app to another. What’s more important, their services are pretty good and are actually helpful.

Still, they need to work out and implement various design patterns for specific controls that appear on multiple apps. The latter part is the hardest of course, but Google can do it, can’t they?

If you didn’t notice, our favorite web giants have recently been snapping up smaller players and their latest acquisitions are pretty exciting for the end user.

Let’s begin

MySpace + Photobucket

Photobucket is a photo sharing website that entered the game too late. But for only opening their doors in 2003, they have grown to an enormous size of reportedly 25 million users and stealing a huge 43% market share (compare that to Flickr’s almost 6%). Via Hitwise

In early May, after much speculation, the merger between the two companies was confirmed for an undisclosed amount (rumored close to $300 million). Photobucket’s amazing growth in just four years can be attributed to MySpace’s sheer number of users as it’s the #1 site where Photobuckets photos are posted.

In fact, integration for the two companies should be pretty simple as most Photobucket’s users are already MySpace users. The companies seem to be perfectly aligned for this merger, so it makes total sense for MySpace to go out and pick up Photobucket.

Google + Feedburner

Another 2003 startup to have a successful $100 million exit is Feedburner.

If you have a blog and care for RSS traffic analysis, you’re probably already a Feedburner user. It standardizes the feed and gives the publisher various data for research, profiting and more.

Because Google knows everything, they know how fast the blogosphere is growing and they know the monetization possibilities of Feedburner (think AdWords in feeds, etc.)

Awesome acquisition and a good ROI for Feedburner investors.

eBay + StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a different type of link sharing website as it uses a recommendation system for links for its users. With 150% growth over the last year, it is one of the best ways to discover new content online.

eBay was apparently impressed about StumbleUpon’s community-making abilities and in its efforts to “pioneer new communities,” it acquired SU for $75 million.

SU now has a huge parent company that it can use to power an even bigger growth in the upcoming years. Thankfully, eBay is known not to ruin its acquisitions (ex: Skype) More via Yahoo!

Big acquisitions in June?

Could Facebook and Yahoo! finally tie the knot? This is something I’m going to keep an eye on. Facebook has been making quite a splash with its Applications offering and there’s simply no stopping this company.

FB has a much better community than MySpace and with Applications, it finally has all the (if not more) social aspects that MySpace had for years.

But can its $2 billion pricetag finally be met? I guess we’ll see soon enough. Via Mashable

From what it looks like, this feature is currently only available in San Francisco and Bay Area (including San Jose), but I’m sure it’s going to be expanded in the future.

It’s a pretty simple use, put in an address and if you see this Street View button, then you can enable the feature. For a sample view, click here to see the awesome Moscone Center.

There’s not much more to say about this right now. Just go ahead and try it out.

Looks like Google hasn’t officially announced this yet as I can’t find anything on their blogs, but it’s live and kicking. Watch either Google’s main blog or Google Maps blog for announcement.

Update: On top of San Francisco, the service is also offered in the following cities: Denver, Las Vegas, Miami and New York.