Robert Scoble is wondering “where is Google? in this conversation about lock-in?”

Well clearly they were all off sneaking their new ‘Office 2.0′ to the mainstream press. They didn’t sneak it to John Battelle or Danny Sullivan or even Dan Farber. Robert Scoble thinks they’re ‘hiding’ from the blogosphere. Om Malik refused to agree to their terms and in general - this was about as normal of a launch as you can get.

But back here in the blogosphere Chris Messina and I have been trying to point out the subtleties of Google’s strategy, which is only even MORE reinforced now with the recent launch of this supposed Office 2.0 strategy. Taking on Microsoft is all that Google is concerned with - not us - believe me.

Robert did get ONE lone blogger - Pete Hopkins - to respond (but NOT representing the company), Pete is going off on his own - criticizing what I wrote and bringing up several points which I’m sure he seems to think counteract our position.

The funny thing about all this - is that clearly Google IS doing what Chris and I claim, as their recent launch exemplifies. So if Pete’s arguments prove anything its that Pete has swallowed that Google Red pill and/or that he doesn’t really see the strategy as clearly as Chris and I do. Either way - we’ve got two different kinds of ‘conversations’ going on.

To summarize:

- when we (me and Chris) say ‘open’ - we mean supporting something OTHER than Google. I know this might be a big stretch for some employee of Google, but let me be clear. There really IS a world out there that ISN’T Google. As much as Chris and I love Google (I don’t buy stock - so I’m NOT a shareholder) we couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any Google property. And all that Google seems to care about is eating Microsoft’s lunch, so…………..

- what Chris and I care about are OTHER properties, OTHER vendors, like like me and you. Like the recently demised Kiko or all these new kinds of aggregators or new ways to provide reputation and trust. All of it - NOT Google.

- open standards - to me - means supporting something OTHER than what you’ve invented. So if Google supports or extends APP (Atom) - great! But that also means (to play nice) they should support other standards as well. Its easy for someone to say Google supports open standards - but they ONLY seem to be Google’s open standards.

- its great that Google will allow us to get at our own Base Reviews and Listings via APP - but - why not XML-RPC? See what I mean.

- the point about authentication is not whether Google can glue together all of their properties and take on Microsoft - but whether we can participate in this approach. I guess it must be obvious to those paying attention that Google has NO INTENTION of allowing us to participate. And that’s the gist of the argument. Its not even “are they part of the conversation” - it’s “WE’RE THE NEW MICROSOFT AND WE WANT IT ALL!”

- do you see somewhere - that an outside vendor can participate in Google’s Office 2.0 strategy? Or am I missing something?

- nit picking about whether XML-RPC is part of Atom or is RSS better than rdf and whether Gdata does this or that is a different conversation. If you wanna have that conversation - coolio - but count me out. I’d like someone at Google to defend the notion that they get the whole magillacutty and that we don’t even get any crumbs….. for us.

What I’m talking about is “will there be any crumbs left on the table for us to exist on?”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 11:20 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.