>>A social network is better when almost everyone are on the same network like it was with facebook. Disagree completely. A Social Network is better when ever

>>A social network is better when almost everyone are on the same network like it was with facebook. Disagree completely. A Social Network is better when everyone can communicate seamlessly with each other, that does not require a hierarchy model controlled by a single entity, it is much much harder to do in a decentralized way, and it much less profitable but it is far from impossible or even better as a social network to be centralized. It is better for profitability to be centralized, it is better for censorship, control, etc to be centralized, but for the actual users it can be decentralized, seamless and far better >Google avoids having a too good social network to avoid becoming dominant. Google does not have good social network for a variety of reasons, none of which is because they have purposely chosen not to have one. >If Google provided a good stable API, people may never consider going to concurrence. By pissing off some users, Google stimulates competition and avoids becoming a "public service". I think this reasoning explains well Reader, XMPP, their dropped API and explains also why they do not embrace open standards. When talking Anti-Trust this is the exact wrong approach. MS got into Anti-Trust trouble because of their non-standard dominance over the web. It was a combination of IE Integration into windows along with other technology like ActiveX that was not open to competitors. Forcing users to use the IE Web Browser. Had there been a stronger Standard like HTML5 is today, and has MS been a full partner and compliant with it I likely would have avoided all Anti-Trust actions (especially in the US) even with the integration of IE into windows. Adopting Free and Open Standards can be a defense against Anti-Trust.