Comments on: OpenSocial opens new can of worms

Google has finally unveiled its social-networking strategy, and it's ambitious even for the seemingly unshakable tech company.
Video: Flixster built into MySpace profile via Google's OpenSocial

[Jesse Chan]

Slap in the face

Google laid the hammer down by announcing OpenSocial. For those out there that thought that Facebook was the next big thing and would lead to Google?s eventual downfall, think again. Google has done it again by strategically abstracting themselves from the social network war:
http://fishtrain.com/2007/11/01/opensocial-social-unification/

[UmeshS]

May be not....

My view point is that Google just minimized all Facebook competitors by creating a level playing field and in turn help Facebook!

[ceoballmer]

ALL A STUPID FAD!

C'mon people!
http://****************.blogspot.com
All of this "social" stuff is crap!
Like bell bottoms, turtle necks, pet rocks, apple computers, pop
rocks, .... JUST A FAD!

[iBuzz]

Go ahead... take the Blue Pill

Despite what they say about doing no evil, Google is a creepy
company that collects, saves, and processes everything you do
with their software. They know what you search for, know what
you have on your hard-drive (through Google Desktop), and
their software scans through your Gmail to know what you're
writing to others about and what they are writing to you.

And now they want to track how everyone on the web interacts
with their friends and social contacts by getting web developers
to create social software using their OpenSocial SDK and having
it hosted all over the web.

But you go ahead... take the Blue Pill.

I share your concerns about Google knowing all. It sure seems that the potential is built right in.
Google describes limits to what their software can access; for instance, they say that Google Desktop works
only as a desktop app and does not communicate data on one's hard drive back to Google.
I can understand how the Google desktop app may simply signal it's presence to the Google browser, and
a local communication from the desktop app to the browser occurs so that the desktop results are displayed together with the browser results.
But maybe Google is fudging the truth on this. I don't know enough to evaluate the claims from the realities.
Can you point to additional information on these questions?
Thanks,

[moorrbrt1]

sounds like they're going to mess with it until it's no fun anymore

If I absolutely have to look at advertisements, then I would rather they be something that I'm interested in. The problem I have is with the pushy ads. The ones that blink and flash and if you cursor gets anywhere near them you're off to another site.

[Kimsh]

Google empire

Facebook is the next big thing already. Thats why Google is trying to build a little consortuim to challenge them, they can't do it alone. They were late o nthe scene so now they are trying the "more open than you" strategy. Yawn.
Wait till the initial crazyness dies out and see what real use this stuff can be put to.