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I think Google would be wise to offer a discontinued product to the creator. If they have no interest in Reader any more, then Wetherell should be offered the p
by lessnonymous 13y ago
I think Google would be wise to offer a discontinued product to the creator. If they have no interest in Reader any more, then Wetherell should be offered the product.
Possibly he would need to pay something for it (preferably over a long term) or he would be given the source, but absolutely no users / user data.
That way they get innovators to dream big ideas like AdSense, but if those ideas are rejected or later shuttered, the innovator gets to keep his idea.
- mierle 13y agoUnfortunately most Google software is practically inseparable from Google's infrastructure. Open sourcing stuff is hard, mostly thankless work.
- Mindless2112 13y agoNeat things do come of it though. Code Search, for example, ended up as an technical explanation [1], which I found fascinating, and example implementation [2], which I found useful. [1] http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html [2] http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/ http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/
- mdwrigh2 13y agoThat's not actually the codebase for code search though -- it's a re-implementation of it done in the original authors new language.
- Mindless2112 13y agoThat's my point though: just because a retired product is heavily tied to Google's infrastructure doesn't mean that they couldn't release something useful out of it.
- danso 13y agoThis is a great read, thank you for posting it!