Google Everywhere
Google is in the middle of a pretty big play - look at "Open Social" and the Android mobile OS play together, and you see the same thing: Google wants you to have access to Google apps everywhere. Unlike Apple, they don't really care what device you use, so long as your searches, calendar needs, and mail are all coming from Google.
The ground they are fighting on with "Open Social" is tougher - while developers might like the idea of a common API, the users of Facebook will have to be enticed off by something better and/or cooler - meaning, Google's influence there is reduced. On the mobile side, Mathew Ingram is completely correct though - the market in the US is very, very ready for more openness.
Comments
Social Gardens, Walled or Not
[Patrick Logan] November 5, 2007 17:10:39.521
Things like open Social may inspire people to create open gardens, on the web, not walled like facebook. Yes, FB has a large base, but it is not "installed" the way Window's large base is. It is on the web but walled off.
Loyalty can be lost more easily, I would bet. And so there is incentive to create new gardens and take people away from FB. People can be "on FB" and move to more than one other open garden. And Open Social can tie some of those together.
In the long run it seems FB is lost unless they open up. They have little control over "loyalty".
Only because MSFT's wall is "installed" do they have more control over their customers' so called loyalty.