Why Google loves developers
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Google is in the online ad-service business. Why does it lavish attention on software developers and open-source projects? Kicking offline Web apps into gear
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Belatedly recognizing the importance of social networking as an online service and advertising vehicle, Google this week will unleash its strongest response yet to the rising threat and skyrocketing popularity of MySpace and Facebook.On Thursday, Google will announce OpenSocial, an initiative with a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) at its core that is designed &quot;to spread social applications across the Web,&quot; the company said.These common APIs have been designed to let developers create social networking applications that will run on multiple Web sites, simplifying the making and distribution of these programs.Partners supporting OpenSocial include various well-known software developers and social networking sites: Oracle, Salesforce.com, Hi5, iLike, LinkedIn, Slide, Ning, Friendster, and Plaxo. Neither Facebook nor MySpace is on the list of partners at press time.The move is also no doubt intended to dilute the massive&#160;success Facebook has had in attracting external developers&#160;since it opened up its Web site platform to third-party applications in May.About 7,000 such applications have been built for Facebook so far, helping to make the social networking site more attractive to people and thus boosting its usage.&#160;MySpace recently announced it would follow Facebook&#39;s example.By allowing developers to write an application once and have it work in multiple social networking sites, the OpenSocial initiative could, in theory, water down the appeal of Facebook&#39;s ballooning applications catalogue.Once considered a fad of interest mostly to teens and young adults, social networks have significantly broadened their demographic appeal, attracting many people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond.Along the way, social networking sites have been created for other purposes beyond entertainment and staying in touch with friends. For example, there are social networks tailored for specific occupations, such as doctors, and interests, such as sports.Google has had a social networking site named Orkut for several years, but it doesn&#39;t seem to have merited much attention from the company until recently, and only after the popularity and potential of this type of site became evident.Google was reportedly locked in a battle with Microsoft&#160;over which one would be chosen by Facebook to buy a stake in the social networking company and earn a deal to provide advertising to it.Microsoft eventually won, buying a 1.6 percent stake that values Facebook at an eye-popping $15 billion, although the social networking company reportedly will have revenue of just $150 million this year.With about 300 employees now, Facebook expects to have about 700 a year from now, its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg recently said. About 250,000 new users register every day at Facebook, which was founded in 2004.In June, MySpace had 114.1 million unique visitors worldwide, ranking first among social networking sites, followed by Facebook with 52.2 million, according to comScore. Hi5 ranked third with 28.2 million, while Friendster was fourth with 24.7 million. Orkut rounded out the top 5 with 24.1 million.More information about OpenSocial and resources for developers will be available in this Web site later this week. There will also be a developer sandbox.
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As companies ramp up open-source deployments, expertise is in high demand and short supply. The costs of developing talent can add up.
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For anyone who has been using open source for a while, the current commercial enthusiasm for communities, collaboration, and all things Web 2.0, is rather amusing.  After all, the idea that users are not to be regarded simply as passive and grateful recipients of whatever is handed down to them from on high, but need to be treated as partners and participants who can make valuable contributions to the formulation and development of new products, is central to the way that free software works.  But some companies that are starting to dabble with Web 2.0 ideas are discovering that you have to be careful what you wish for when you solicit this kind of user feedback.  Just ask Michael Dell.
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Search giant Google has updated a wide range of its web based services, making them easier to use for mobile users. While many enhancements are iPhone specific, they also ready Google's apps for the arrival of Android, Google's own open-source mobile software platform.
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Blog: The software giant follows through on better support for dynamic, or scripting, languages for Web development.
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In this post on the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans takes a look at an article published in a recent php|architect issue from Chris Hartjes about how several recent advancements in the PHP community have helped developers think more in "the Rails way" of development.   Chris does a good job of laying out his points. As with any article of this nature, you are going to agree with some of them and you'll disagree with some of them. However, to get to that point you'll have to consider all of them. That's really the point of the article; making developer sit back and think for a minute. It's well worth the read.   Cal also mentions some of the topics presented in the article including more conceptual ideas like "Convention Over Configuration" and "Rapid Should Mean Rapid".
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Google is the only search system with any kind of personality. So why not a Google browser? &quot;Google has wooed Joshua Bloch, one of the main developers of the Internet programming language Java, from Sun Microsystems.
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This is what the future looks like.  Heavy adoption of open source at the core of commercial software so that developers can focus on pushing the envelope on innovation, not reinventing wheels that provide no discernible differentiation.
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An alliance of companies led by Google plans to roll out a common set of standards to allow developers to write programs for Googleâs Orkut and other social networking Web sites.
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Not too long ago, Google Inc seemed little more than a nuisance to Microsoft Corp&#39;s software domination. No more. As Google rapidly rolls out new products, the company best known for its wildly popular search
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(InfoWorld) - Google Inc. is hosting events for software developers in 10 cities around the world on Thursday, promoting the use of its tools and services to build Web-based applications. The events, which began in Sydney and will wrap up later Thursday in San Jose, California, were expected to attract around 5,000 developers, with many others tuning in online. The events provide further evidence of how far Google has come from being an Internet search company to offering software and services that compete increasingly with those of Microsoft Corp. In a series of presentations, engineers showed how developers can use APIs (application programming interfaces) for Google Maps, Google Checkout and other services to add functionality to Web sites or build new, mash-up applications. The company also unveiled new software, includingÂ a browser plug-in called Google Gears, for viewing Web applications offline, and the Google Mashup Editor, an "experimental tool" for creating user interfaces with AJAX. Gregory Renard, CTO of IT consulting company Wygwam , traveled from Brussels for the event near Bastille in Paris. He came to research whether he should start using Google's APIs for his work, which involves building proof-of-concept applications for businesses and government agencies. In a sense he is on the front line of Google's rivalry with Microsoft. Renard is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional, one of a group of hand-picked developers chosen for their deep knowledge of Microsoft products. Today he is undecided as to whether he prefers the Google tools to Microsoft's competing Windows Live APIs for Web-based applications. Google's roots are on the Web but Microsoft has much more experience building tools for developers, he said. "Google is a search company that wants to be a software company, and Microsoft is a software company that wants to be a search company," Renard said. In any case, he's glad that Google has emerged as a Microsoft competitor because it should ensure more innovation and lower prices, he said. One question he hoped to get answered Thursday was whether Google's APIs will remain free to use, which is important if he plans to use them for his clients. Yvon Cognard was there to learn more about the Google Maps API, which his company uses at its Web site Trivop.com , which bills itself as "the first video guide for hotels." He has already been using it for some time and called it "a very good tool," although Google could do better with its documentation, he said. Cyril Pierre de Geyer was trying to decide if his company, Anaska , which provides training in MySQL and PHP, should also offer training in Google APIs. Anaska uses Google Maps on its own Web site to show locations of its training centers, he said. Google has a good reputation with developers and contributes code to the open-source community, such as extensions for the MySQL database, de Geyer said. But he has also noticed a tendency by Google to monetize its services more aggressively than a few years ago, he said, by putting more ads on its search results pages, for example. For Google, the events should help to build a bigger developer community, which in turn should help promote paid services such as the professional edition of its online productivity applications. It should also mean more Web sites using Google services, which helps drive its advertising business. Company engineers sought to emphasize the collaborative role that developers can play with Google's APIs. "We need your creativity and your imagination to drive the development of these products," said Patrick Chanezon, evangelist for Google Checkout, at the start of the Paris meeting . The other events Thursday were being held in Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Madrid, London, and Hamburg, Germany.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Worldwide events showcase Google Gears, Mashup Editor, and other Google APIs to developers.
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I&#8217;m playing the devil&#8217;s advocate here, so keep that in mind in case I end up trampling all over anything you hold dear :) Google has taken a lot of flak on a lot of issues in the past few years - it&#8217;s a price an industry leader invariably has to pay.  Apart from Blogger spam [...]
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To encourage programmers to build applications for its Web services, Google rolls out the red carpet for developers at a conference in San Jose, Calif.
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Google has an idea so novel that it should patent it.
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Hefty valuations = a bet on the future.  That future is clearly open source + SaaS, based on the multiples people are willing to pay.