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I really liked Chris Dixon's post "What's strategic for Google?" from a while back: http://cdixon.org/2009/12/30/whats-strategic-for-google/ ... following his line of thinking, this may be a lame me-too product, but they _have_ to run it anyway: if they allow Facebook to move a lot of user-hours away from the internet to what is really a big intranet, that would kill Google's revenue.



Right, so the interesting twist in Google's story is that because of their dominance in the open web it is in their interest to protect the open nature of the web, rather than lock users into another walled garden. That's pretty cool, and I think they've been very smart to position themselves that way. It's still surprising how they completely fail to innovate in some areas, though.


And how much I personally use this will hinge fully on how well they do on making this as open as possible. If this has a solid API, and it's easy for an ecosystem of associated tools to grow around this, then I'll probably end up using it a good bit.



Yes, that's exactly how I think we should look at this. The open web is full of AdSense-junkies, while on Facebook they won't have it.

I'm not sure I agree that there's lack of innovation at Google; I'm trying to think of a big company that does any better in that regard and can't think of any.


So, just my thought, Google's primary mission is not search and advertsing, but has changed to be a wheel in a pool full of small fishes.




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