When you look at the range of competing products and services — some bought just to be shutdown or reworked into oblivion, some created internally — that Google has released over the last few years, you have to wonder if there’s a plan anymore.

Take Buzz, their new Twitter-ish option built into Gmail. Can the Google Wave team possibly be happy about something that replicates lots of its more useful functionality and in some ways implements that functionality better? Why did this feature appear fully formed suddenly a day ago, when new Gmail features are traditionally worked out and developed through the Gmail Labs function? Why do you have to wander through numerous Google control panel back-waters just to fix the application’s serious privacy flaws? And while we’re at it, why is Google Contacts (a core service that interfaces with Gmail, Buzz, Wave, and numerous other tools) so hideous and clunky?

I guess the question, really, is this: Is Google in danger of becoming a hopeless mess of conflicting and confusing services, or is it already a hopeless mess?