Can Google create community?

I have been meaning to blog for ages about a site I use called Goodreads. It is really excellent, I signed up ages ago and cant remember exactly how I found it but I think it might have been a Rails app. Anyway, it is a fairly simple idea, log what books you read (or want to), rate them and share reviews with others, I am on there as thattommyhall. What convinced me to use it was the really stellar monthly emails with interviews with authors and picks of books with a certain theme.

I have been playing with my new HTC Hero and there is a Google Android app that can scan books and add them to the (easilly overlooked) My Library section of Google Books. While the app is good, there is no feeling of community there really. Orkut does not seem to have taken off and they released Wave today but I dont know if they can really get a feeling of community in their apps. I love the stuff they put out, use gmail and docs in particular pretty much constantly but think facebook, flickr and lots of other sites somehow seem to get more of a communtity vibe, perhaps it’s even the google branding - it all looks the same.

Anyway, I have things to do today, if anyone gets an invite to Wave and wants to send me one, please do.