Gruber’s Take on Google’s Openness
John Gruber compares Nick Bilton’s comments on the growing secrecy in Silicon Valley, to statements by Google’s Jonathan Rosenberg in “The Meaning of Open”.
At Google, a company that prides itself on openness, some buildings were on “lockdown” to ensure that upcoming products don’t leak. … Bilton: “Google has started to realize that they have to protect upcoming products and adopting secrecy has become necessary within the organization.”
Rosenberg: “Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet.”
According to John Gruber, Google cannot be for an open internet and transparent government if they’re not open with their intellectual property. The comparison hints that Google’s lockdown on upcoming products goes counter to their openness of data, freedom of choice and collaboration, etc. This is tantamount to saying that “Google’s cafés are closed to the public, therefore Google is going against it’s openness principles” or even “I can’t go talk to Google’s CEO whenever I want, so Google is not open.”
You cannot compare secrecy of an upcoming product to Google’s attitude towards openness and freedom. Such comparisons are just as inconsequential as comparing Apple’s beautiful products to its messy organizational structure. Who cares?
Such a viewpoint would deem that an open Google is one that forces each team to broadcast to the public what they’re working on, allows free public access to Google’s buildings, and gives away all of Google’s data. Gruber’s comparison makes absolutely no sense.
Warren Buffet once said that the best businesses were economic castles protected by unbreachable moats. Now, Erick Schonfeld writes that if search is Google’s economic castle, Android is a moat, Chrome browser is a moat, and Google Apps is a moat — all free products, subsidized by search profits, intended to protect the economic castle that is search.
‘Android, as well as Chrome and Chrome OS for that matter, are not “products” in the classic business sense. They have no plan to become their own “economic castles,”’ says Benchmark Capital VC Bill Gurley. ‘They are not trying to make a profit on Android or Chrome. They want to take any layer that lives between themselves and the consumer and make it free (or even less than free).’
So don’t measure the success of Google’s new businesses by how much revenue or profit they generate directly but measure it by how much they shore up Google’s core search business. ‘Google is … scorching the earth for 250 miles around the outside of the castle to ensure no one can approach it. And best I can tell, they are doing a damn good job of it.’
” Hugh PickensLarry Page, CEO, Google
“Larry will now lead product development and technology strategy, his greatest strengths, and starting from April 4 he will take charge of our day-to-day operations as Google’s Chief Executive Officer.” —Eric Schmidt
