Now something good about Google APIs… I find that the Chrome Extension and App API is both simple enough yet powerful enough and also solves many of the dirty problems like cross-domain service calls to be a suitable base for the still ill-defined Chrome OS. If you haven’t tried out writing an extension yet, you should… It’s so much cleaner and powerful than the Microsoft IE Extension Architecture which, by the way, is one of the most poorly documented areas of Microsoft’s vast platform..

Just as Apple is known to create amazing products out of old ideas, its about time Google be known as a company which screws up otherwise really good stuff.

Google can still beat all of her competitors, its got Android, Google+, Talk, Apps in cloud. It has all the components to be really great! Why aren’t they doing it???

Actually I wrote a blog post about this exact topic several months ago which can be read here: http://jaffar.pk/blog/google-ecosystem-analysis/

Having used both AWS and google’s offering, there’s no comparison. Amazon gives me everything I need (and then some) to host a successful product.

You’ve missed the whole point of the article.

In particular:

“Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.

“Our Google+ team took a look at the aftermarket and said: “Gosh, it looks like we need some games. Let’s go contract someone to, um, write some games for us.” Do you begin to see how incredibly wrong that thinking is now?”

How can Google get third parties to do all the work of building out Google+ (and the Google platform in general) if all these tools are only accessible internally? It’s all about the Dogfood Principle (“You don’t eat People Food and give your developers Dog Food.”), and Google gets this one 180 degrees wrong.

Google gets this one so completely wrong that with respect to platforms, it might be best to call Google “Defective by Design.” They built this amazing wonderland of brilliant tools and back end design and communication pathways. But they didn’t enforce a service-oriented architecture, so it’s hard for one part of the company to build on the work of another part of the company, and when they do, they probably just go to the data out there on the base platform. And they hired brilliant people and built a system for brilliant Google people and didn’t want to share that system with all the non-brilliant non-Google people out in the world at large because that system was their special thing that made them better than everyone else.

So flipping that around and trying to turn things into world-accessible platforms with open lines of communication to outside developers and consistent, documented public APIs will be so hard it will be like rethinking the whole company and how it works.

However, I still believe that the Google system is the platform upon which the stars are created. Do these stars themselves have equivalent accessibility externally (vs competition) to become platforms within themselves… do they all need high levels of developer API accessibility (YouTube?), when do the ones that do need it actually need it (Facebook didn’t have it initially), will accessibility drive value (advertising, user base) or deplete resources (CPU time, fibre use) or create value elsewhere (another ad engine)? Android has been successful and is quite accessible to 3rd parties because it had to be (vs Apple originally), and IMHO G+ will probably take a leaf of out Facebook’s eh book and become a platform accessible to 3rd parties. However, currently maybe Google is doing an Amazon with G+ and releasing early with later improvements (inc. 3rd party API’s).

All in all, my outside of Google view is that Google gets platform, Google is the platform, it’s their platform, and the public go to it in their droves, and quarterly reports have an upward trend!

Like a house with no doors.

This design philosophy continued, and, you can’t easily go back and add the doors and security etc. But it has to be done. Especially for new products. Steve is asking for whole design philosophy change. I think that is the point of the “rant post”, they must assume everything will be accessible by the public in the early stages of design.

So, compared to Amazon and Microsoft, Google is not a universal platform, it is not a universal chassis like a GM that can be a pickup, SUV, minvan, or big sedan, it is a custom race car built to be the best on one track. No mount points for the minivan or SUV body.

Since the original other products ( Gmail and later, Picasa) were introduced just to compete with Yahoo tit for tat but it kinda morphed into competing with Microsoft Office and the Apple iPhone and Amazon with music and books and …. then Sergie came back into management and started killing off stuff. Thank God G’s search revenue is enormous and no one, not even Microsoft, has been able to buy into that business, otherwise Google’s lack of success in most of the “other” products would have buried them.

In short, the rant was GREATn advice for a Google that wants to be in the “software as a web service” sector and they are very lucky to have an engineer that speaks out and communicates so effectively.

Personally, post Schmidt, I think they will start dropping off any new development efforts that do not lead to “enhancing search revenue”. Amazon, Microsoft and others have the cloud services act together already.

Facebook is awfully boring now! As MySpace got boring when it changed everything! So I think Google+ comes right on time! I opened a Google+ Account because the new Facebook is not fun anymore! And I must say that their news feed being totally confusing, it was one of the reason I left! Too complicated! too many settings to deal with! I want something simple to use! Facebook is not as simple as it used to and the fact they never stop changing everything all the time just gets on my nerves.

Google+ is not better from what I’ve seen for now but it is definitely a fresh break from Facebook. The presentation looks good and it is SIMPLE to use so far!

Casually tossing off such a poor Facebook copy really implies Google is smugly confident that they can ride out their early success forever. Unless they take criticism like this to heart, they have no chance.

Remember – anything you say or do online can be seen and read by anyone. Removing a post doesn’t make it go away and in Steve Yegge’s case, it just fanned the flames.