For those of you who have been living in a Google-proof shelter this week, Google introduced its latest toy, Buzz, this week. Superficially, Buzz operates a lot like Twitter, or like Facebook’s status page, in that you’re encouraged to share your fleeting thoughts with your crowd.

However, in my opinion, it so far has several significant advantages over either Twitter or Facebook. Enough so that it’s already looking like it might overtake both for me, personally, as my preferred source and sink of “short-form” communication. I also think that it scores big over Google’s other collaborative experiment, Wave.

Read on for my pros and cons… To be explicit, in each section, “Advantage” and “Disadvantage” below all are from Buzz’s point of view.

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I have a number of fellow geek friends who are deeply distressed by the current trend in computerized gadgetry, in particular, the iPhone and the much rumoured, but, as of this writing, still entirely vapourware Apple tablet device.

Myself, I think it’s pretty much where the industry’s been heading since the day the first truly retail home computers hit the market, and more to the point, I think it’s exactly what they should be doing.

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