[rbarooah]

Part of what has put Google in their position as the gatekeeper is that the perception of being balanced and neutral. If search was more overtly biased, Bing would step in as the neutral player.

The more they consolidate their power, the less they seem constrained by this. I don't see anything that fundamentally distinguishes google from these other companies other than their present strategic position.

[tferris]

Sorry, I don't get your point.

You can be successful with your product on the WWW without employing any Google services, being totally independent. If people and other sites like you and link back to you your traffic will quickly skyrocket—which feels natural. You are not obliged to use any Google service like GA. Just use the Internet and its open standards and you are ready to go because Google left the Internet's core like it is and didn't build a walled garden around it. That's the great thing about the web: it's decentralized and everybody can contribute, Google haven't tried to change this. That's why I don't like the native app trend with the appstore, all the innovation the Internet brought us are vanished by one central and strict entity and nobody cares, Android at least tries to emulate some parts of the net (i.e. by using intents, allowing multiple appstores, with the open nature of Android, etc.), Google is regarding their marketplace Play much more relaxed than Apple.

Looking at the Appstore or the Facebook API, there are so many rules which don't follow any of the core principles of the Internet. You have to play by these rules otherwise you are banned or completely and utterly dependent of one single entities. Moreover, if you then play by Apple's or Facebook's rules you still do not get the impact as from Google traffic-wise.

Ultimately, Google haven't entered the Chinese Market which shows the company's values. Every larger western corporation have build joint venture based branches in China—every corporation, except Google—and that's distinguishes Google.

[rbarooah]

I agree that you don't get my point.

The reason Google hasn't built a walled garden around the internet because they simply don't yet have the power to do that.

You talk as if it was something they could easily have done but have chosen not to. I disagree. They just aren't in a position to do it.

It makes no sense at all to say that innovation on the web has vanished because of the Appstore. We are in in a boom time for internet startups, and we have healthy browser competition leading to web standards advancing much faster than at any time in the past.

There is room for both the open web, and for more controlled environments like the app store or Facebook to coexist and compete with one another. Each offers different tradeoffs.

The existence of different kinds of environment is a good thing. It provides a variety of different economic opportunities, and choices for consumers.

Google would naturally like to have more influence and control, but the reality is that they exist in a competitive environment.

[tferris]

Pardon, you are totally misleading.

Google could do this—there are multiple options to silently wallgarden the user. Just check how much traffic Google moves. If they want they could arbitrarily redirect traffic and subtly punish user's not using their tools.

But that's not their culture. Just look at their products, how far they pushing the boundaries and still stay open, give back and contribute to the community. Look at V8, Dart, Go—all open, all free, all top-notch, all following the Internet's principles and look at Apple, FB—I see no groundbreaking innovation that's free or not protecting their walled garden. Even if Google has some hidden agenda with their products (like with Chrome) the products are always best-of-breed and never deadlock the user.

The point is: Google benefits of an open Internet, their business model is fully based on an open Internet. Therefore they will do everything to keep the Internet neutral, free and decentralized. In contrast, the bizmodels of Apple and FB do not rely on these values, they need walled gardens. Enough reasons to trust them less.

RE-EDIT: Took out later added passages as wished.

[j_col]

Facebook have given back plenty of open source to the dev community. Scribe (their federated logging server) and HipHop (their PHP compiler) come to mind immediately, but there may be others.

[zerostar07]

Their business tactics are ridiculously sleazy though. Aside from the google smear campaign fiasco last year, do you know that facebook does not allow AdSense advertising on it's 3rd party applications? They don't want FB ads performance to be compared with Google's (more profitable ads) on the same pages.

[j_col]

I somewhat agree. Frankly I'm no fan off Google, Facebook, or Apple. But pretending that one of them is more "open" then the other because they open source some software now and again is a falsehood: they are all for-profit corporations, with more in common with each other then what separates them, notions of culture aside.

[j_col]

> (please don't mention some minor FB side-products; Apple has tons of innovative products but none of them is free).

Please don't rewrite your original comment after I've responded, not cool.

[tferris]

You are right, I re-edited and took the passage out (as written below I wasn't able to reply before directly).

[mindcrime]

Scribe (their federated logging server) and HipHop (their PHP compiler) come to mind immediately, but there may be others.

Thrift[1] and Cassandra[2] as well, FWIW.

[1]: http://thrift.apache.org

[2]: http://cassandra.apache.org/

[rbarooah]

You've actually made my point for me. "Redirecting traffic and subtly punishing users" is far from a walled garden, and would lead to an instant backlash if detected.

As I said, they don't have the power to close the internet that you attribute to them. This has nothing to do with their culture, however great you might think it is.

[tferris]

Discussing a hairsplitting definition of a walled garden doesn't make sense here. Google do not deadlock wether users nor site owner/publishers (referred above as "users" as well) to use their products but they could as explained above (deadlock=walled garden).

[rbarooah]

It sounds as though you are now claiming that Google has already turned the Internet into a Walled Garden but are simply nicer in their policies than anyone else.

This is the first time I've heard anyone make this claim.

[Sargis]

Google's mission is to display their ads to as many people as possible. How is a walled garden going to help achieve that goal?

[rbarooah]

...because Google left the Internet's core like it is and didn't build a walled garden around it.

The commenter I was replying to claimed that Google chose not to build a walled garden around the internet because of their good character.

If they were able to do this, they'd be able to limit the threat of Facebook and other advertising based competitors.

They haven't done it simply because they can't. Not because it wouldn't be to their advantage.

[Natsu]

> The reason Google hasn't built a walled garden around the internet because they simply don't yet have the power to do that.

Google has more power than many others who have built walled gardens in the past.

[Tloewald]

Google have entered the Chinese market, compromised their values and still got their asses handed to them by Baidu, then pulled out. Not quite the same thing.

[dnda]

Care to support your theory with numbers and facts?

[pyre]

Google was in China until their internal network was (supposedly) compromised by the the Chinese Government. This is a fact.

Google was not the #1 search engine in China. This is also a fact.

Whether they 'got their ass handed to them' is another story, which could be supported by numbers, though it's somewhat subjective.

[Tloewald]

Google made a deal with the Chinese government to censor search results - also a fact.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-bows...

Google's penetration in China was very low (we've had native Chinese speakers living with us for the last three years and they had hardly heard of Google).

Not only is Google's share in China low, it's falling.

http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/02/23/sizing-up-two-internet...

[brudgers]

"You can be successful with your product on the WWW without employing any Google services"

It is often more difficult to be successful on the internet without devoting significant resources to Google specific SEO. Doing so without the benefit of Google search would be orders of magnitude more difficult, and Google is under no obligation to return any particular website in their results (e.g. Safe Search).

Google is a company just like any other, only, perhaps, more so.

[tferris]

I don't agree.

If you build a really great web based product you don't need to do any single SEO activity to get strong traffic. No white or black hat or anything needed. People will come anyway.

It's all about the product. If it's good people will tell and Google will notice. And Google is so smart that every crappy site powered by 100,000 system generated backlinks blasts will stay inferior.

[brudgers]

>"If you build a really great web based product"

Assuming a really great web based product begs the question a bit. It's a pretty select group.

[zerostar07]

Twitter, facebook, airbnb didn't do any SEO

[brudgers]

JustinTV, Scribd, and Carwoo are more typical new companies.

Ebay and Amazon are more typical of large consumer facing companies.

Facebook does a great deal of SEO - it's how they compete with Linkedin for eyeballs.

[jkn]

I don't see anything that fundamentally distinguishes google from these other companies other than their present strategic position.

There is I think a difference in company culture. Sure, it is not something you can measure like market capitalization or dividends, but that doesn't make it insignificant.

It is common for people to say that all big companies are equivalent in that they just look for the best strategy to maximize shareholder value, which they have to do by law. I don't think that's the complete picture: there are humans behind every company, behind every decision they make. If Larry Page and Sergey Brin believe in an open Internet, that will strongly influence what strategy among many they choose to maximize shareholder value. Well, as long as they have a controlling stake, which might be for a long time seeing the recently announced stock split.

But it's not only board members who determine how open a company is. For example, developers have their say in what technology or protocol will be used for a particular project. What they propose might depend on their personal views, and what passes as a valid argument (e.g. openness or standard compliance) depends on company culture. Personal views and company culture obviously depend on who gets hired, and that's a matter where anyone (developer, HR, etc.) might have a say. If Google employees have a bias towards hiring people who embrace open technologies, that will have an effect. And if Google's image tends to attract job applications from people who believe in an open Internet, that will also have an effect. This culture thing is probably more stable than a strategic position.

[rbarooah]

For all the reports that Google is full of idealists, I hear just as many that it's a very 'careerist' place, and it's clearly attractive to people who want to make money as much as it is to those who believe in internet freedom.

I agree that culture is not irrelevant. I don't even dispute that Google attracts people who have a certain ideology. I just don't think that Google's ideology is all that clear or meaningful.

When they use words like "openness" or "freedom" these become a rorschach onto which people project their own hopes.

I would like to see Google succeed by proving the competitive advantage of openness, not by moralizing about others who are choosing to test another theory of how to provide value.