Often praised as Google's "non-evil" attempts to open up the Internet, OpenSocial and Friend Connect are simply two more cutely-named efforts by Google to dominate the Web.
When it comes to sociability on the Web, Google has one goal in mind: selling advertisements. Targeting ads toward users is, allegedly, getting much simpler thanks to the emerging social graph built from users' social networks and applications. So when Facebook came forth with its third-party application suite in May 2007, a potentially (so they thought) lucrative haven for ads, Google soon pushed back with OpenSocial: an effort, it describes, to "make development easier for both websites and developers." This sounds more like a nice way of saying, "a team of Internet companies intending to bully Facebook out of business."
The same basically goes for Friend Connect, Google's "data-portability" initiative.
Friend Connect is allegedly Google's way of providing Web users the openness they so deserve, and the freedom to port their data and connections about the Web on some of the sites they use.
Of course, we all know Google cares as much about our ability to port our data as it does our complete privacy (which, it says, "doesn't exist"). So why would Google bother with data portability?
Simply put, Google is after ad dollars. More eyeballs on Google sites, and sites where Google places advertisements, via data portability, means more eyes on ads – and mo' money.
Sure, every company needs to make money (except, well, Facebook). But rather than calling the OpenSocial Foundation and Friend Connect what they really are (business initiatives), Google colors every money-making scheme with benevolence. It's a ruse that's worn pretty thin.
As with any organization seeking competitive advantage, Google seeks to continue to capture a larger market share. We saw this with Microsoft but, the difference in Google’s newly attained competitive advantage is that their products are free versus having a price tag.
"Talk about culture , is there any other company that allows its employees to work on the project of their liking in their spare time "
Why, yes! I would imagine just about any company would allow its employees to work for free in their spare time on something that it then can put out as a product. LOL!
"It is better trying something risking to fail, rather than doing nothing" says the common adage. I don't think that we should blame Google for trying what you think are "disapointments". We cannot expect everything we do to be successful. As a whole Google is a successful company and like many other major companies (such as Microsoft) there is a time for great acheivements and unfortunatly there is a time for failures. What matters is how such companies can recover from that failures.
Re: "I think some of the projects have been included just to make the disappointments count reach 10"
I just wanted to reply to this because we actually had more than 10 and then widdled it down. Nevertheless, that isn't to say you have to agree with us. Glad to have some pushback from you.
But regarding the idea that some of these project are just experimental, you certainly wouldn't get that feeling from the press that regularly reports on Google's every experiment as if it were the replacement for every similar project that came before it.
"There is potential in advertising but it might be harder than anyone thinks"
...might be? more like...certainly is.
Google has to plug every possible copyright infringement leak on Youtube unless they want death by a million cuts. Even if they manage to plug virtually all the holes....there's an army of attorneys salivating to pounce on Google the minute they monetize Youtube...and this is on top of the army that already came after them for the obvious / big-ticket instances of infringement.
"Hey, look, I used my video capture card - Here's the final episode of the Sopranos! woohoo! enjoy!"
RE: numbers, I recall prior to the Google acquisition hearing that the bandwidth cost alone for Youtube was on the order of $2-$3 million per month. I see calculations from 2006 that placed the cost at $170,000 per day, $5.1 million per month, and certainly there's more bits being pumped now than 2 years ago.
I know there are countless commercial sites that lever Youtube for hosting content (marketing or otherwise), I suppose they could charge for that (maybe they already do under certain circumstances?).
If targeting banners and/or pre-roll, postroll, midroll, leave-behind ads are coming, so are the lawyers.
...will be interesting to see how google escapes this trap.
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There's a public-policy war on copyright that nobody is winning, and inconsistencies in viewpoint and interpretation seem to be multiplying. We need to step back and think our policies over again, or we risk having a strategy that fails everyone.
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