Google About Openness 283
sopssa writes "Several sites, including TechCrunch and The Register, are reporting about an email Google's VP Jonathan Rosenberg sent to employees on Monday about the meaning of open. 'At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. ... Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in.' But are we likely to see Google open their search engine, advertising or the famous back-end system? In their words, that would mean Google and other companies would need to work harder and innovate more to keep their users, for everyone's benefit."
"Openness" defines shift from 20th to 21st century (Score:5, Interesting)
We are seeing a shift from private to public, closed to open, secretive to transparent and it's all because of a far more efficient and cheap ways to communicate. The act of communication is so fundamental to how we relate to the world, that when you change the way you communicate, you change the shape of everything in the world.
Corporate structures will change drastically. How, exactly, no one know. Can corporations like Google still exist 50 years from now? Will there be any need for massive bureaucracies any more or will the opposite happen, and just a handful of bureaucracies be able to control everything?
Re:"Openness" defines shift from 20th to 21st cent (Score:3, Interesting)
To the extent that that is true, it's great.
But openness is also getting abused to mean its exact opposite.
Doublespeak! Beware openwashing [wordpress.com]
Re:And why should they? (Score:1, Interesting)
This is pretty much where Microsoft and Apple are going too. There are core parts that are distinct to their operations that are closed (or in the case of Microsoft, open but only to partners, in other words, documented and auditable), and then the rest, which is slowly getting more and more to be open source in the "published" sense. The BSD parts of OSX are published, the UI isn't.
This was true with Redhat years ago as well (probably still is).
eheee he heee he he. ..... he ... (Score:5, Interesting)
i am a developer. leave aside the many measures google have taken to empower INDIVIDUALS, like enabling individual websites with adsense system and giving them the power to generate revenue whereas all of the big boys were treating small publishers as shit, google by itself provided many useful tools to aid us developers in the act of development. its so much that some of their accessories are invaluable additions to the dev environments and software we use now.
i think you confused them with another company, which treated everyone but the big buck like shit, for over 20 years.
Re:Data liberation (Score:3, Interesting)
too bad they still haven't answered to the highest-voted data liberation suggestion ;)
http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=43649&t=4364a [appspot.com]
Re:Say they do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just curious, what search terms are you using? I've found that adding "+datasheet" or "type:pdf" helps a lot in searching for pinouts, at least for things that are common enough to make it into digikey...
Re:Typical proprietary bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a difference between using open protocols and using open source.
Personally, I have no problem with companies using open protocols. The only thing I think Google is missing is a way to export all your Google information into a data file you can upload into someone else (or a way to give someone a "key" to your information to side load it), otherwise, they don't use proprietary email standards (*cough* Exchange *cough*) or use proprietary web page extensions (*cough* ActiveX *cough*) that cause people to have to buy Google servers, software and equipment to be able to use said protocols.
I'm all for open protocols, even if you don't open source the code generating it as long as you don't need the code generating it to use it (or have to pay a patent or other license to use it.)
Re:Say they do... (Score:3, Interesting)
And Google still has an uncluttered start page.
You know what's funny is that 90% of the time when I do search Google for something, I end up clicking the Wikipedia link anyway. Wikipedia should start their own Search service that will include "not only Wikipedia, but other sites too" and it would be a massive success.
Re:Typical proprietary bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Didn't Google just release Android out in the open, and Chrome browser, and Chrome OS?
Yes and no.
They have open source versions of both Android (AOSP) and Chrome (Chromium). Chrome is still very new and hasn't really gone into release, so it is a bit early to say how that will play out.
However, Android and AOSP have a very weak relationship. If you build AOSP you get something that won't work right on anything but the android emulator. It lacks the drivers necessary to actually work on a phone, and it also lacks most of the features that would make somebody want to buy an android phone. Additionally, there really is no evidence that any of the phones out there are running any particular build of AOSP even if you neglect the proprietary bits. Google also doesn't use AOSP as the actual development project - they do all their development in secret, and then do a huge code dump on AOSP sometime after they release a new android release on phones.
The AOSP build system is also a real pain to use - the OS and the kernel are built separately, and you need to add all kinds of stuff to it to make it actually work. It really seems like Google has no intention of making the AOSP a functional OS that can work on real phones.
Google seems to have a tendency to just dump chunks of code out there. They're more than happy to have people contribute fixes which can make their way upstream, but nobody outside of Google has any influence on the direction of the project. This is not an open-source bazaar-style approach.
However, it is obviously still preferable to being completely closed...
Online Office Apps (Google Docs) (Score:2, Interesting)
What I would *REALLY* like to see open-sourced and/or available for private use would be the Google-Docs API's. I'm sure many companies are in the same boat as ours where we aren't willing to trust an external entity with our private information, but would *REALLY* like to have something like docs for online document collaboration.
I know that google sells advertising, but I don't see any reason they couldn't package and sell versions of "Google Docs" to easily be used on private servers. If they would, I know many companies that would jump on this. I've certainly be watching for something comparable that will run on apache etc, but haven't found it yet. I think that some of their model is flawed in that even open-source API's generally need to hook into google's servers. Information may want to be free, but our private records don't!
Re:Data liberation (Score:5, Interesting)
I cannot trust them because in the United States a public corporation is required by law, first and foremost, to do what is in the best interests of shareholders which generally means anything which legally maximizes profits.
So what you're saying is that you don't trust them because you have no idea what the law actually says, or how corporations actually work?
Your name wouldn't happen to be Kyle Mortensen [theonion.com] would it?
A publicly-traded company is required to maximize shareholder value in accordance with its prospectus.
Before a company goes public, it produces a prospectus. The prospectus details the business plan of the company, as well as its philosophy and self-imposed restrictions. It is the responsibility of the investor to read and understand the prospectus before investing. If the prospectus states that the company will place customer loyalty above short-term profit, then any lawsuit based on "the company didn't maximize short-term profit because they weren't pricks to their customers" will fail.
HTH.
Re:"Openness" defines shift from 20th to 21st cent (Score:2, Interesting)