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Post "Good Google," Who Will Defend the Open Web?

Posted by timothy on from the eff-and-fsf-should-be-on-the-team dept.

psykocrime writes "The crazy kids at Fogbeam Labs have started a discussion about Google and their relationship with the Open Web, and questioning who will step up to defend these principles, even as Google seem to be abdicating their position as such a champion. Some candidates mentioned include Yahoo, IBM, Red Hat, Mozilla, Microsoft and The Wikimedia Foundation, among others. The question is, what organization(s) have both the necessary clout and the required ethical principles, to truly champion the Open Web, in the face of commercial efforts which are clearly inimical to Open Source, Open Standards, Libre Culture and other elements of an Open Web?"

15 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Does Vint Cerf still work at Google? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because I would have thought a dude with the title "Chief Internet Evangelist" would have something to say about this.

  2. Like Politics by Bigby · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even if such a mythical company existed, you can't pick that one because ideas change; people change; companies change. For the same reason, you can't grant party X the power to do M, because party Y will use that power to do N. What may seem "good" now will never remain that way.

    1. Re:Like Politics by Looker_Device · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The EFF has been pretty consistent over the years. Perhaps they lack the clout, but they certainly have remained pretty steadfast for a long time now.

      --
      Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
    2. Re:Like Politics by Zeromous · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Companies always act in their own interests, it's just that some are more ethical than others.

      Why do we need a Champion, when we could have a Hall of Heroes?

      --
      ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
    3. Re:Like Politics by fustakrakich · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps they lack the clout, but they certainly have remained pretty steadfast for a long time now.

      That's because they lack clout. The old thing about the camel going trough the eye of a needle applies here too. Power does not come cleanly.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  3. We will by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If the grassroots don't organize then all will be lost. There is too much money to be made closing it all up, overcommercializing it, and using it to extract maximum revenue from compliant consumers.

    Unfortunately, I don't think we will. Too many people have been blinded by the merchants of "cool" to see the true cost in terms of freedom and privacy which come with drinking the Apple/Google kool-aid.

    We have to stop doing business with those who close it up. That means a full boycott of DRM and paid content. That means eschewing privacy-stripping "app stores" on locked down platforms for sideloaded FOSS. That means running strict ad blockers to choke the funding stream and make being intrusive scumbags a bad business model.

    The web is turning into a hybrid shopping mall/movie theater. Don't like it? Stop funding it. Stop being a source of revenue and eyeballs.

    I'm sure many of those who read this post will complain about the direction of the web then head right back to the app store to buy something they don't need on a platform they don't control.

    The "web" is no longer what is in a browser. It now extends to all Internet-connected services. Locked down paid apps on restricted, DRM-friendly platforms are going to replace open, standards-compliant pages, but only if we let them.

  4. There's only one company on that list... by k3vlar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's only one company on that list that seems qualified to me, and that would be Mozilla.

    My reasoning (and this is based on my opinion, so mod how you will):

    • - Yahoo is slowly dying, having failed to gain a real foothold in the era of cloud computing
    • - IBM and Red Hat have enterprise customers they will put before "openness"
    • - Microsoft, despite it's attempts, still doesn't really understand (from a corporate perspective) what "openness" is, or how to use it
    • - The Wikimedia Foundation definitely doesn't have the clout

    Mozilla has long championed open standards, and although they once toppled the "invincible" Microsoft, whether they still hold that kind of power remains to be seen...

    --
    Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
    1. Re:There's only one company on that list... by ohnocitizen · · Score: 4, Funny

      Their power has diminished, since the days of Netscape and the Two Trees. Arda is now a darker place.

    2. Re:There's only one company on that list... by turkeyfeathers · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yahoo will rise again. They clearly grasp the significance of cloud computing, which is why they've collected all their employees in one place.

    3. Re:There's only one company on that list... by roca · · Score: 4, Informative

      Mozilla has plenty of clout.

      Post-Opera Mozilla controls one of the three important Web engines. Any Web standard needs to be implemented by at least two engines to become a recommendation. That gives us a powerful say in what gets standardized.

      We have enough Firefox users that things we do in Firefox have a real impact on the Web. For example, we introduced Do Not Track. We think Google's Native Client isn't good for the Web so we've introduced asm.js instead which is rapidly getting traction. Webkit's original CSS gradients sucked so we introduced a better alternative that is now standardized. We don't like encumbered codecs on the Web so we pushed the creation of the royalty-free Opus audio codec which is getting a lot of traction. Etc.

      Having said that, we don't have infinite clout and we sometimes lose battles and have to make compromises. But then, so do our much bigger competitors.

  5. Microsoft is the only Company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft is the only company that cares or will defend the rights of the end user to ensure all software is secure, free, Open and meets all standards which the end user should be able to use, understand or knows of.

    Microsoft has proven over the past 35+ years how much they do their best to meet the needs, requirements of all end users.

    They are also very trust worthy and honest when it comes to doing what is right for the end user. For example, look at how IBM attempted to rip off end users with OS/2. Microsoft saw this for what it was, and worked on their own version called 'NT', which meet and surpassed OS/2 in every way.

    Another example is Netscape and IE. Microsoft saw Netscape ripping off end users by selling something which could be giving away for free. Microsoft produced IE which was free, met all standards, and allowed end users to have secure, free and open access to the Internet. Without IE, the Internet would be locked down and owned by Netscape.

    Microsoft even fought Sun/Oracle on the Java front. Granted they lost, because they did not provide enough finical incentives to the US legal system, however they still stood up to Sun/Oracle to keep the Internet free from Java, which as we all know is a security risk and should never be used in DVD Players, Blu-Ray Players, nor even for server side Chat Room Programs.

    Now Microsoft is taken on Apple and Google with their Windows RT and Windows 8. Will hope they win as they feel the sales of Windows RT and 8 tables and phones surpasses the sale of iOS and Android combined.

    When Windows 8 was being developed, Microsoft wanted to reduce the source code size and the final binary size of Windows 8 to improve the performance for the end user. They removed the start button, which has increased the performance of Windows 8 and all other Microsoft products running on top of Windows 8.

    Microsoft only cares about the end user, and will do whatever it takes to own to standards to keep the end user free and open.

    As Mr. Gates said in an interview a few weeks ago, if we give Mr. Obama enough power to do what is right for the people of the US and the rest of the world, we will be free, and safe.

    So lets all give Microsoft and Mr. Obama all the power they need to do what is right for everyone.
     

  6. Duh by oGMo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because this is a complete troll piece to begin with, and adding Microsoft to the list just makes it blatant. Nowhere is evidence given for Google "abdicating their position as such a champion," it's simply stated with the hope we accept it as a given. Then toss Microsoft into a list of "good guys".

    Who owns Fogbeam Labs, anyway? They claim to be "Open Source 2.0" (what does that even mean?) and very new.

    --

    Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

    1. Re:Duh by oGMo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Anybody who reads the news and is paying attention to what has been going on lately realizes that Google has changed. Are they completely "evil" now? No, but it's quite clear that openness is less important to them than in the past.

      I don't think this is really that much different. Mostly in that Google was never particularly open. They just happen to have finally killed a service that people actually care about (vs like Wave or Buzz or even iGoogle) in their Ahab-like (or Quixotic, depending on your view) pursuit of G+.

      They've all but declared war on RSS, they never implemented OpenSocial in Google+, G+ doesn't support any of a whole raft of standards that you'd use when building a social network if you cared about openness, Android has *never* really be developed in the open... it's "open source" but Google do everything and then throw code over the wall to the world.

      They never cared about RSS and it's obvious Reader was never anything but a back-shelf product people happened to like, because, well, Google. None of their (major) products have been developed "in the open"; the fact you can even get the source to Android is quite something. Where's the open development (or source code) for Web Search, Gmail, G+, calendar, etc? Locked up tight. Don't idealize Google; they were never an "open source" company.

      But the point is that there is a pattern present, where Google are showing less and less interest in Open Web principles.

      Screw the web. If you want to beat Google, don't do it on their playground. It's not even a very good one.

      Who owns Fogbeam Labs, anyway?

      I do, along with my cofounders.

      Then it's very disingenuous of you to post the article as if you were a third party when you are not.

      --

      Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

  7. Huh by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Extrapolation, much?

    Evidence for abandonment of the "open web" - cancelling Reader and the CalDAV API. Evidence for support of the open web: Chrome, GWT, open sourced jscompiler, V8, tons of random libraries and developer tools, SPDY, extensions to SSL, HTML5 rich snippets in search, etc.

    I will state right now that I'm a Google employee, so you may think that makes me biased, but employees are often the companies harshest critics (internally). Yet this is a ridiculous stretch. Yes, I love(d) Reader too. Cancelling a widely loved but ultimately niche tool for which there are many replacements is not "abandoning the open web", it's recognising that with a finite amount of resources not every product area can be tackled.

  8. Wikimedia hath no clout? by WGFCrafty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Those who say Wikimedia is powerless, I completely disagree. They're a non-profit concerned with sharing the largest quantity of the most accurate knowledge with the most people. They control several of the most popular websites on earth with few commercial interests and have representatives in MANY languages.

    Their largest subset (or was it them too? wp and wm?) also showed their willingness to shutdown completely for a day to demonstrate principles. Google would have taken quite a hit monetarily if they completely shut down (they just posted links and warnings).