Slashdot Mirror
Google About Openness
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."
We want systems to be open, so that we can freely use them, but we will keep our own system proprietary. Where Google makes Open Source, it does so to disrupt other people's business, so that Google can continue to use open infrastructure. Sure, it's good business sense, but spare us the "we are the good guys" bullshit.
Why should they open up everything? They're open in areas that aren't their primary business. That doesn't mean that in order to claim openness, they suddenly must give away the technology behind their core business. Open takes many forms: it can be a matter of publishing source code (as they do for many products) or interoperability specs (as they also do). The fact that they remain closed about other areas does not affect how and where they *are* open.
actually, i think a lot would change if they opened up their search algorithm, since the first page on every search would be nothing but links to viagra and malware.
CmdrTaco, kdawson(troll), all of you, need to chill it with the rhetoric. If I wanted sensationalist news I could easily hit up Fox or MSNBC. Of course while it's important to hold Google accountable once in awhile. But they are one of the biggest supporters of open source, and all you guys do is beat them over the head with a stick as if they are Microsoft. Sometimes I wonder if the editors here ever really grew up. Open source is great. It's one of the great achievements in human cooperation. But to belittle anyone who doesn't take the plunge 110% is really small of you guys. It's a good thing there are parts of the OSS community that welcome partial contributions with more open arms than do Slashdot editors.
I'm not sure this will go over well, but I have karma to burn and sometimes we need to turn the mirror back on ourselves.
meep
Google definitely wants us to be open with our information!
this kind of memo by a vp, talking about 'open' like this. i think this is a serious indicator. totally in contrast to the behavior we see from other companies. i appreciate this.
the comment of the poster is hilarious btw - google values openness will google open its search engine. if google did that, it would lose all the power it can use to enforce the openness, and 'closed' would prevail, through the efforts of stranglehold corporations opposing them. no, opposing 'us', for i am on the same side with google apparently, from what i understand from that vp's memo.
regardless of how much one wants to be open, one should always employ wisdom.
Read radical news here
This is not about FOSS, it's about not getting locked in and being stuck with legacy proprietary data. I'd say Google is on the right track with this site: http://www.dataliberation.org/
.' But are we likely to see Google open their search engine, advertising or the famous back-end system?
No, actually, we aren't. The email says so, in the fourth paragraph under Open Technology > Open Source:
While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users. The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in. Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to "game" our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.
A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The chicken looks at the pig and says, "Hey, why don't we open a restaurant?" The pig looks back at the chicken and says, "Good idea, what do you want to call it?" The chicken thinks about it and says, "Why don't we call it 'Ham and Eggs'?" "I don't think so," says the pig, "I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved."
When most of your "profits" don't come from "open systems" but rather advertising, where you data mine every piece of information and sell it off in order to sustain the rest of the business which is "open". Sure it's open, because if they charged fees for closed programs, nobody would develop for them.
Only Apple can do that lately :(
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
"Slashdot's anti-Google schtick?" What Slashdot are you reading? So one or two slightly critical articles means Slashdot is anti-Google?
Slashdot has been unrelenting Google's cheerleader for almost a decade. The reason for criticizing Google's lack of openness is to point out to people that Google is actually a closed source company that dangles free carrots in front of people to get them onto their advertising platform that will index all their emails, conversations, documents, and more. And we're supposed to trust the company because they said they're trustworthy. Do you realize how silly that sounds? Don't you think Slashdotters would mock the situation if it was any other company but Google?
Oh, give me a break. Statements like that guarantee an instant +5.
Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in.
I'd be more inclined to believe this if they did things like make the address book for Gmail easily accessible and easy to update and manage by third party applications. Yeah, you can export it and there are a few third party ways to do it but realistically your ability to synchronize contacts outside of Gmail is limited at best. I realize the reasons why they haven't done this but saying you want open standards without actually making the user data (the one thing I actually care about) open and accessible is disingenuous to me.
Slashdot has been unrelenting Google's cheerleader for almost a decade.
Yeah, google "Chris DiBona". Er, bing or yahoo Chris DiBona.
Actually I suspect that after DiBona went over, the /. editors were hoping he could get them jobs, complete with stock options, 20 percent "genius time" and food served by Pacific fusion chefs. But as time passes, reality sets in.
Apple was the big white knight around here the first half of decade. /. was cheering them on for using *iux (even it was BSDish), supporting CUPS, and then it was cheering for Webkit. Then the mood changed about 2006 - 2007 with the release of the iPhone and /. went from being pro Apple to anti-Apple and Google replaced them as the great white knight of opensource. Like Apple, that's been going on for 3 - 4 years, so now it's time for the mood to change to Google being the next evil(tm) company on /. /. is no different than any other media: build something up so it's more fun to rip them apart later.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
there's something like that. corporate culture is created by the initial visionholders of a company. then, this affects their hirings. in the end entire corporation becomes something shaped with the vision, and continues to operate as such. there are numerous corporations which are maintaining a definitive culture over 100 years in europe. there are corporations which had their corporate culture shaped in front of our eyes, like microsoft. corporate culture makes or breaks corporations.
Read radical news here
This manefesto is some hardcore bullshit. Not just for the reasons that everyone else has been saying (as true as they may be). The thing that got me is that Google flat out acknowlegdges that there is a problem with the Android platform splintering, and says they are trying to avoid the problem with android. Well guess what? the only way to actually do that is pressure vendors regarding android extensions, which violates section 9 of the open source definition. Really, the whole point of open source is endless variation and user control (which includes vendor control. Under the open definition vendors have every right to add proprietary and closed add ons), neither of which google apparently wants Android to have. The truth is this: Google doesn't actually want Android to be open. The whole compatibility issue would solve itself instantly if they closed it, even a little. This manifesto is as much about rewriting the definition of open as anything else. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that they have self-labeled themselves the messiah of open, they would have dropped this charade a long time ago and closed Android, since it benefits everyone involved, including handset vendors and (in 99% of cases) consumers. I really can't think of any reason beyond the PR stuff why Google would want Android open, and I challenge anyone on the internet to come up with a good one.
The reason they want the internet open is because that is where they make their money. No other reason. Nothing noble.
"I won't reply back to Anon. Cowards. Show the courage to log in so I'll know you get responses. You won't waste my time."
And that is just so much rubbish from your inferiority complex. Sometimes people write interesting stuff but just didn't go through the trouble of registering. And I have an account, but generally never read followups.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating