What I really find interesting in this article is how some of the Facebookers are already considering Google as a Big Brother of Online world and in most cases, It is. I think Google is to Today's startups what IBM was to 70's & 80's Startups and Microsoft was to 90's Startups, a Gigantic and Monopolistic enemy to fight against.
they(Google) don't think Facebook's staff has the brainpower to succeed where they have failed. "If they found a way to monetize all of a sudden, sure, that would be a problem," says one highly placed Google executive. "But they're not going to."
This is the same kind of Arrogant and cocky attitude which made IBM irrelevant in PC market, Microsoft irrelevant in Online market and Maybe Google in Advertising. History repeats Itself every decade, atleast in Technology.
"Google is to Today's startups what IBM was to 70's & 80's Startups and Microsoft was to 90's Startups, a Gigantic and Monopolistic enemy to fight against."
That argument makes no sense, especially in comparison to facebook. Google is a set of disconnected services that you can take or leave. You don't like google search or gmail or google maps or google news? Go ahead and use something else. For any service that doesn't require immediate personalization, you don't even need to sign up ever. Even if every single person you interact with uses google search or gmail, it doesn't matter because you have no obligation to use it. As a developer, if you hate google and don't want to use anything by the company all you have to think about is SEO, most of which is basically common sense and regular marketing on non-google sites. Why would you possibly even need to consider "fight[ing] against" google unless you were directly competing?
In contrast, Facebook explicitly wants to be THE monolithic dominating force on the internet. You can't even use it without signing up and joining the whole Facebook thing. If everyone you know is using it, you end up missing out; it's basically vendor lock-in for your entire social life. And as a developer, interacting with Facebook in any meaningful way means dealing with Facebook every step of the way.
Monolithic platforms like Facebook are truly awful. Facebook is defined by locking people into the platform while Google joins together disparate web services and competes on quality and brand recognition. Google has its problems, but Facebook's problems are right at the core of everything it does.
Facebook explicitly wants to be THE monolithic dominating force on the internet. You can't even use it without signing up and joining the whole Facebook thing.
It is the new AOL.
I'm still waiting for the "Internet" of social networking sites to come along and make Facebook, MySpace, etc. things of the proprietary past.
they(Google) don't think Facebook's staff has the brainpower to succeed where they have failed. "If they found a way to monetize all of a sudden, sure, that would be a problem," says one highly placed Google executive. "But they're not going to."
This is the same kind of Arrogant and cocky attitude which made IBM irrelevant in PC market, Microsoft irrelevant in Online market and Maybe Google in Advertising. History repeats Itself every decade, atleast in Technology.