Social Networking is all the rage these days. We have a torrent of websites: Myspace, Facebook, Friendster; just to name a few. Some are good, some have become bane of the internet <cough>myspace</cough>. Now Google (GOOG) has decided to jump into the frey hand in hand with Yahoo as a major player.
Google OpenSocial is ‘supposed’ to be a very open framework to build web applications on. Much like Facebook’s extensible framework, except actually open and it wouldn’t require one to be logged into one social site in-order to use the platform.
As the article states:
The idea behind the Google-initiated OpenSocial platform is to create a common coding standard for the applications so they work on hundreds of Web sites. The applications could permit chats, games, media sharing and more.
By contrast, sites that haven’t joined OpenSocial typically rely on unique coding that has prevented widgets developed for its sites from working at other places on the Web.
Hopefully unlike all other platforms, they will actually deliver on their promise. Making a “standard” for us to easily and happily play with while we work on your OWN websites.
With Yahoo joining Google in this endeavor, this is what really worries me:
By creating a nonprofit to oversee OpenSocial, effective July 1, the companies want to ensure that intellectual property assets remain available to everyone. The companies said the foundation also would provide transparency and guidelines around technical and legal issues as the platform evolves.
As much as we all love Google: The bigger they are the harder they fall. I’m all for open source, open platforms and the like … but it really seems like Google is digging it’s fingers in to deep with Yahoo. Hopefully it they don’t turn out into a big cult that subtly controls us. That would suck.
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