{"id":1884,"date":"2007-11-05T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T17:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/11\/05\/google-all-aboard-the-open-train\/"},"modified":"2007-11-05T13:45:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-05T17:45:00","slug":"google-all-aboard-the-open-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/11\/05\/google-all-aboard-the-open-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Google: All aboard the Open train"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open cellphones, OpenSocial — it’s obvious that Google sees as its main competitive advantage a totally open (more or less) approach to data of all kinds. Just as it is trying to create a platform for the free movement of social data through OpenSocial, so it seems determined to create an open platform in the mobile arena<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ll say one thing: mobile is one of the places where we could all use a bit more openness. Right now, the mobile sphere is where the Internet was back in the early 1990s — it’s a morass of proprietary standards and walled-garden content, combined with the most usurious fees since the department-store credit card was invented.<\/p>\n

As for Apple’s iPhone, it may be sexy and fantastically useful, but it is still a bit like a mobile version of America Online as far as I can tell (just as Facebook is on the Web). Is that really the best we can do?<\/p>\n

I don’t know whether Google is trying to control the whole mobile effort, or whether it just wants to piggyback on mobile as an ad platform, or maybe a bit of both. And there is certainly a concern, as Om Malik notes, that some of the company’s partners are less than stellar<\/a> (yes, I’m looking at you, Motorola). But I think the quest for openness has to be supported in virtually every arena, if only because it makes things easier — and I would argue in the long run more rewarding — for users.<\/p>\n

Further reading:<\/b><\/p>\n

Search Engine Land has more on the news<\/a>, and Silicon Alley Insider looks at potential<\/a> winners and losers (Larry Dignan at ZDNet has some thoughts<\/a> about that too). USA Today has a short Q&A<\/a> with Andy Rubin, who is spearheading the Android platform project. The NYT has a story here,<\/a> and the official Google press release is here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The live-blogging press corps, meanwhile, consists of Engadget,<\/a> as well as its evil twin Gizmodo,<\/a> along with Silicon Alley Insider<\/a>, CrunchGear’s John Biggs<\/a> — who is taking questions via IM — and a blogger from PCWorld mag<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Open cellphones, OpenSocial — it’s obvious that Google sees as its main competitive advantage a totally open (more or less) approach to data of all kinds. Just as it is trying to create a platform for the free movement of social data through OpenSocial, so it seems determined to create an open platform in the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Google: All aboard the Open train”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}