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Yeah! The author is damn right about Google. Until I read this post I was a diehard G fan. Anything G was cool to me. It just took me a few seconds to realize the situation. Most who hate Microsoft's expensive products say that they like Google since its more open. Many ditch MS products and go for Google's. Even I ditched MS office and use Google Docs. But only now realize that I am becoming increasingly dependant on Google. I accept that they build really cool and simple products. But every cool G prod seems to come with an visibly invisible string. Example: they introduced appengine. And they have a Users API which makes a devs job easy but it only works with G accounts. So if u want to have your own accounts system, you have to build it yourself. If Google was really open, they would have had a 'more' general Users API, or atleast the current one with the option of OpenID.

They make their buck when you read a mail in the inbox. And most feel that the strip on top of the inbox is to show news. Well how many times do u see news? I often see 'sponsored link'.

Their vision of "making everything web-based" means what it reads to us. But to G it means having a Google Accounts login for everything and then making money from the ads or using the userdata as stats to build more prods with the G login.

Why talk about open-Bigtable or open-Google Docs? They haven't even made the WYSIWYG editor that's used in Gmail as Opensource. They build most of their apps by modding some other opensource software. Google Mashup Editor uses Codepress. Google Video Player was built on VLC media player.

We fail to understand that Google is like any other company(infact a worse demon). The only difference is that they try to slit your throat politely instead of rudely slaughtering you with ads. I am shifting to OpenOffice. :)

Atleast MS and Apple are being honest and gutsy by 'selling' their software/hardware without much visibly 'invisible' strings like having you to login to Windows with your LiveID or having to use sync an iPhone with Mac OS only or even worse... restricting calls by allowing only iphone-to-iphone calls.

Now its a serious 'Hero Wanted!!!' situation. We need someone who can stop G's monopoly game, a MS-Y! combo will not do much damage to G! And the hero to crush G will have to do it for everyone's good and not to start his monopoly.

One simple and collective method of doing it is mass adoption of OpenID. We have OpenID sites. But they have alternative login. Getting OpenID into mainstream as the 'only' login system for most sites. My pledge: my next site will use OpenID.

"They haven't even made the WYSIWYG editor that's used in Gmail as Opensource."

There is a WYSIWYG editor included as part of Google Web Toolkit, which is released as open source. I don't know if it is the exact same one as in Gmail but it does the job.

I would also say that my distaste for MS products doesn't really have anything to do with them being closed source. It has to do with the fact that Microsoft documentation is super crappy and it makes their stuff a pain to work with. Where as the GNU/Linux man pages are very well written and easy to get the information you need.

U've got a point there.

Extensive customisability is also confusing. Linux distros are great(i started running slackware to get rid of the virus problems that I had on windows). For non-superuser distros, the developer should remove the extensive customisability. The desktop environment for example, u get a lot options from fluxbox to kde to TabWindow Manager. Those kind of too confusing options should be removed in non-superuser distros. The procedure of installation of additional software, windows wins hands down. There aren't too many types. All a user has to do is to click on the setup file of most software. In linux, if a distro doesn't have a package manager, then learning how to install different packages from rpms to tar.gz to whatever, takes time. And even worse, some apps come with the tag "compile it yourself".

This is depressing. The author doesn't seem to understand that free software and/or open source software does not mean no price.

Sometimes, release software under a free license does make a lot of business sense. Sun is a hardware company, and by releasing some of their software under a free license, they are hoping for more developers to adopt their platforms.

Remember the "developers, developers, developers"...Microsoft is trying to do the same thing. The express editions of visual studio, which are proprietary, are meant to do that. I would expect an MS employee to know that.

Now whether any of these companies succeed in increasing adoption by releasing software under an open license depends entirely on how good a job they do.

The difference is SUN doesn't have a business model anymore. Hardware is now a commodity. What business do you want to be in? One where the price of your product has to decrease (and every tech web site is trumpeting the benefits of cheap commodity hardware) OR the one where you can charge MORE each year for a little bit different version of your software (and you have a built in monopoly (like Microsoft and Google)?
While I am bearish on SUN oops, JAVA, try to imagine what would have happened if Sun hadn't realeased Java for free. I suggest that the Internet boom would have created three families of tools fo rbuilding web applications:

Scripting (Perl, PHP, &c.), C++, and Microsoft.

Which one do you think most corporations would be using?

I agree that giving shit away isn't a source of revenue, but it can be a good way to play defense. In Sun's case, Java seriously hampered Microsoft's vision of the Internet future. If there was no Java, I believe Sun wouldn't exist today, because Microsoft would have taken 100% of the market for corporations creating public-facing web applications.

Sure, Sun's in rough shape. But at least they have a chance.

Giving things away can make sense. Microsoft gives away compilers and crippled versions of Visual Studio, but such things help sell Windows. Sun giving the world a set of platform-independent dev tools doesn't exactly encourage people to buy their platform.
excellent excellent article.

dare has a fantastic way of deciphering through any amount of hype, and talking about the real situation!