Open...and Shut Facebook isn't necessarily the new Compuserve, and Google might not be angling to be the Hotel California of tech, but all of the big web giants seem intent on locking their users into experiencing a single-vendor web.
Facebook riled users this week by throttling their ability to export their Facebook friends' data for use with Google+ or other services, while Google dumped Twitter from its realtime search in favor of its own Google+. The web as an intersection of seemingly infinite networks threatens to become a limited patchwork of monopolized web experiences that only grudgingly talk with each other.
Not that the web giants are the only ones playing this game. Apple has spent the last few years tying together a seamless hardware/software/web experience that blocks rivals in the interest of "delighting" users. Never mind that Apple's apparent lock on manufacturing processes could well be enough to ensure its lead, the Cupertino giant is also determined to ensure that Apple collects a toll at every step of its users' interaction with iOS devices: hardware (cha-ching!), apps (cha-ching!), media (cha-ching!), and so on.
iCloud, Apple's newest salvo, does nothing to liberate users' data from the tyranny of individual devices, and instead locks them down more than ever, with Steve Jobs holding the key.
As much as I've pooh-poohed the efforts of Diaspora and other open alternatives to the increasingly closed web, it's clear that something must be done to reverse course on this Compuservification of the web. Actually, something already is, but it seems to be taking far too long.
That "something" is competition, and we'll see it evolve from closed-versus-closed to open-versus-closed, with some unlikely adherents of the open (standards/source/APIs) religion. Like Microsoft. Or Google.
Google, of course, is often associated with the open camp, and for good reason. But it seems to have lost its open way of late, and instead apes the worst of Apple and Facebook. Hence, Android has become more closed, and Google Search starts to play favorites rather than algorithms. But my money is still on Google to revive its open approach to computing and the web.
As Google employee Tim Bray writes: "We're working out ways for the people of the future to talk with each other." Bray isn't referring here to Google. His "we" refers to Google and Facebook, and presumably others. Because that's how Google tends to think: not as a monoculture but rather as a connecting point between different networks.
There's simply no way that we will allow ourselves to be corralled into closed communication. Google will be on the side of openness, because its business depends upon it. The trick will be whether it allows its dominance of networking to restrict its users' sociability. That's perhaps a weak play on words, but in a social-network battle with Facebook, Facebook clearly wins on 'social' but Google feels much stronger in 'network'. I and the majority of people I know have a Gmail account, and increasingly use Gtalk for chat.
Facebook messaging still feels like an awkward add-on to the Facebook experience, while in Googleland, messaging is the experience. Now it just needs to get social right, which should feel different from Facebook (as Google+ does): more communication-focused, less news feed
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