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Yup, they just did a Twitter. I lived through the Twitter ecosystem collapse and now I'm a VC I worry about investing in startups that are built on any large e
by dotBen 7y ago
Yup, they just did a Twitter.
I lived through the Twitter ecosystem collapse and now I'm a VC I worry about investing in startups that are built on any large ecosystem where there isn't an alignment of clear economic interest.
Google of all people doing this just made it tougher for everyone else to maintain confidence in large vendor platforms.
- itsaidpens 7y agoNo one should have expected Google to maintain focus on anything.
- Gibbon1 7y agoMicrosoft: embrace extend extinguish Google: Hold my Kombucha!
- Gibbon1 7y ago> Yup, they just did a Twitter. You misspelled Sauron. One app to rule them all, One app to find them, One app to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
- zmmmmm 7y agoWell, the good news is that Google is kind of outing itself as a true outlier in that space. They clearly do not care at all about hurting developers that build on their platforms and there is enough daylight between them and other large tech companies on this that you probably don't need to extrapolate from Google to the entire tech world. Makes me sad to say it as someone who has often defended Google in the past, but I can't on this.
- _jal 7y agoIf you build on someone else's platform, the best case is you get to be a sharecropper and can make money as long as you don't make so much that your platform-betters get jealous. The more typical case is this, where you get to spend your time and money doing real-world R&D and discovery of what works for them, for free. If you're going to dance with a vampire, don't be surprised when it bites you.
- pm90 7y ago> If you build on someone else's platform, But isn't that the height of specialization? What does a platform mean anyways if its only used for one thing and not by others? It it somewhat unfortunate that things like this make it abundantly clear that such a reality is not possible.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoPlatform is nothing but a sales&marketing word. It means whatever the owner wants it to.
- mcny 7y agoGoogle positions angular as a platform.
- feanaro 7y agoIt is possible. We just have to prioritize open standards much more than we have been doing in the last decade. History really repeats itself in this regard. First we get ourselves in a tight situation with lots of closed platforms, which is bad for everyone. Then someone comes along, spouting a new philosophy of openness (Stallman comes to mind). The philosophy takes hold and open technology flourishes for a while. But then a huge corporation appears, offering to contribute to this new abundant ecosystem with great new things. By now, people are too relaxed and optimistic, so they readily accept this. Yet, little by little, the corporation exploits this, seizing more and more control, until we get right back where we started.
- krisgenre 7y agoOne way or the other aren't most of us building for someone else's platform anyway?. Mobile, desktop, browser...
- sokoloff 7y agoYou can build alongside someone else's long-term demonstrated strategy (developing Microsoft desktop software) much more securely than developing a feature in someone else's closed garden. You can also spread your footprint. As just an easy-to-discuss example, Facebook and Twitter develop for many different someone else's platforms, by supporting multiple browsers [who in turn support multiple OSs], multiple mobile platforms, etc.
- cortesoft 7y agoI would worry about ANY company that is completely reliant on any other one company. You should never get in that situation.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoHere's a note, straight from quotes file, I took around the original Twitter fiasco, and have since reposted or mentioned on HN a few times on occasions similar to this: * Sovereign from Mass Effect on using someone else's technology: "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it." Strangely, it seems to describe recent (2012/2013) situation with API of Twitter perfectly. -- Twitter did that twice[0] already, but it's a lesson people have to learn and relearn repeatedly: this is what happens when you build a business entirely around someone else's platform. -- [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10427530
- zimablue 7y ago[Spoiler alert, Hyperion series] That sounds totally lifted from the Hyperion series, but maybe the idea is earlier than that, does anyone have a proposed source for that idea that's earlier than 1989?
- djsumdog 7y agoThe writers were big Sci-Fi fans. The Asari were heavily influenced by the Minbari of Babylon 5. There are lots of other callouts to classic Sci-Fi in the series.
- j03m1 7y agoThat ending tho. Unforgivable.
- XaoDaoCaoCao 7y agoI will always be mad about the ME3 ending. If reincarnation is something that happens, my reincarnated self will be mad about the ME3 ending from birth. What a godamn waste.
- jfoster 7y agoIt's worse than Twitter. Twitter made a strategic decision (correct or not) that applied across their entire business. Google are making this decision and calculating or hoping that it's in isolation from the rest of their business. That really doesn't seem to be the case. For the rest of their business' life, Google APIs will be met with skepticism about their long-term prospects. That sucks, because it doesn't seem good for anyone. Not good for Google. Not good for their customers. Not good for 3rd party developers.
- Balgair 7y agoPer many comments left on HN, the people that this does benefit are the PMs. It seems that a well-worn path to promotion at google is to launch products. Hence, the reason we have umpteen chat apps. Once the promotion occurs, it seems, the product is all but forgotten, having served it's purpose: a raise. The divocring of incentives at google are at fault. The PMs aren't incentivied to do what is best for google, as it conflict with what is best for the PMs' families, college funds, mortgages, and health care. Hence, they do what is best for them at the expense of google.
- telchar 7y agoI've already held that opinion of Google products for some time after seeing what a ghost town Sites and Docs are, and the shutdowns of Reader, G+, Wave, etc. At best it seems that you can count on a product silently losing support for years as a hint that you should migrate.
- oldjokes 7y agoGoogle and Amazon are ruthlessly strangling tech startups and smaller mom & pop shops that latch on to something and see a big spike in sales. They have all the data on these companies already, and people are just waiting to jump in and takeover or destroy a company completely regardless of industry or location. They just borg cube consume any success and very few people make any money in this process. This is happening every day, multiple times per day. That's a way bigger problem than relying on an API or building some app in garden.