Comments on: Lessons from Google and Red Hat for Facebook and open source

Drive abundance, then sell minimization of complexity inherent in abundance. That's the right business model for software in the 21st century, Matt Asay writes.

[ian.waring]

There are 3 models...

... advertising, (service) subscriptions and (share of) transactions. Well, at least that's what Steve Ballmer is outlining. The interesting thing is that Microsoft are just about toe in the water with all three; their current core business doesn't yet feature in what he perceives as "the future".

Ian W.

[PACSferret]

Google: "nothing that it does--be it search or advertising--is inherently difficult to copy". Hmm not sure I agree. A key part of the google search algorithm is that click-throughs are logged back to base - the more click throughs, the higher the ranking. So the adundance becomes a central part of the product itself. It would be hard to copy that without achieving abundance first. Chicken & egg not unlike getting a blog above the noise of the 'sphere. And indeed, not unlike the dominant position of some OSS.

[Zak70smith]

more of this at http://megaupload.name