Google Buzz? MSFT, Yahoo Say ‘Been There, Done That’

The dust is still settling on Google’s PR blitz today over Google Buzz, but that hasn’t stopped both Microsoft and Yahoo from speaking up. Their message is simple: been there, done that.

Dharmesh Mehta, Director of Product Management for Windows Live, shared this statement with Search Engine Land this afternoon:

Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.

Yahoo didn’t even wait for the Google event to finish. While we were still liveblogging the event, Yahoo sent this email:

It’s been almost a year and a half since we first launched Yahoo! Updates – a social feature that lets people share their status, content and online activities and stay connected to what their friends and family are doing on Yahoo! and across the Web – and we wanted to share the latest on what’s happening with Updates:

• There are now more than 200 Yahoo! and third-party sites that feed into Yahoo! Updates – like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp and Yahoo! Buzz – allowing people to see and share updates such as when they’ve uploaded photos, changed their status, buzzed up a news story or posted a new restaurant review, all from Yahoo!
• Yahoo! Updates now appear throughout the Yahoo! network, in popular sites and services like Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo.com, and Yahoo! Messenger and across our content properties, meaning people can always keep up to date with their friends’ latest activities
• Yahoo! Updates are featured prominently on the “What’s New” section of Yahoo! Mail, which is used by more than 300M people worldwide. People can also update their status and share it with friends and family directly from the “What’s New” tab
• Yahoo! Updates are now available globally
• Additionally, Yahoo! recently announced an expanded integration with Facebook that will allow people to connect with Facebook friends on Yahoo! and share Yahoo! content with Facebook friends as well
• Ultimately, Yahoo! sees social as an enabler and as a dimension that is part of everything we do — and everything people do online.

There’s truth in both statements. Whether by Yahoo, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, or Friendfeed, much of what Google announced today with Google Buzz has been done before and looks familiar. Google is obviously betting that it’s done a better job pulling ideas and features from those services and combining them into one product.