Here is an interesting article, funny I should blog about it on a Blogger Blog :D But it does make you think. Does Google know too much for one single company? I share the sentiment Mr Dave Winer has, however I do use several google products, not all of them, because there are other companies out there which in my opinion have a better service. Recently Google integrated some nice statistic to go along with their word count in Google Docs. Honestly features like that are inconsequential to me, as I am firmly a Zoho user in that department. For all the bad things that can come from such a free market, the same in which Google can do these acquisitions, there are also companies like Zoho, which offer great alternatives.
Why Feedburner is trouble (Scripting News)
Why Feedburner is trouble
Saturday, July 21, 2007 by Dave Winer.
When Feedburner first came online I warned that there was danger in giving so much power to one company. They argued that they were just a little company, struggling to make a go of it, and no one should fear them. Some of them even took the predictable political tactic of trashing the personality of the person raising the question. I held my ground. I've been around this business a long time, and I was sure their strategy was to sell to a bigger company, and I don't trust big companies. Permalink to this paragraphPeople at big companies often are underpaid, with stock options going nowhere, and feel unappreciated by their colleagues, and when they look outside their company they see lots of people who look happy and successful, making more money than they are, without the political troubles and strategy taxes, and they feel like they're doing all the work. (Of course we look at them and see much the same thing, the grass is always greener over there.) Permalink to this paragraphSo now someone at Google "owns" Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone. Reader software might have trouble working with it. They would say "Oh but the new feeds work better with Google Reader, and that's the one most people use." And by the way, more and more that's true these days. But what about other feed suppliers? Do they have to change to work with Google Reader? They will say no, but there may turn out to be practical reasons why they must. Permalink to this paragraphPeople at Microsoft used to say that Windows isn't ready to ship until Lotus doesn't run. That's not a typo. You'd think it would be the other way around, that a popular operating system would never hold the users of a popular spreadsheet hostage. But it could happen when they have their own spreadsheet and want you to switch. Or if they want everyone to put ads in their feeds. Who would miss a few blogs here and there, don't we all use Blogger anyway (that's one area where they haven't taken over, btw, thankfully). Permalink to this paragraphI would have been concerned no matter who bought Feedburner, had it been Microsoft or Yahoo, or Fox or even Cisco, or if they hadn't sold out at all. Little companies can sometimes do desperate things when new management comes in. Permalink to this paragraphThese technologies work best when there's lots of competition and lots of choice, and when users are alert and don't trust companies that don't deserve their trust. But I can't say I've ever seen that happen for any sustained period, but I still have hope it could happen someday. Permalink to this paragraph© Copyright 1994-2007 Dave Winer Mailto icon.
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