Facebook wants to be the next Microsoft
…at least in the respect of “Non standards-compliant, increasingly bloated, complex, and irrelevant”. Not surprising since Microsoft owns a small chunk of Facebook. Could 1.6% ownership be enough influence to steer them away from the emerging OpenSocial standard?
“Facebook is a supporter of open source and sees value in any contributions the foundation may make to the industry. Facebook is not joining this foundation, but the company remains focused on advancing Facebook Platform to benefit the developer community and help users communicate and share information more efficiently… Facebook will continue to work with other trusted partners to explore new initiatives around data portability,” Facebook’s spokesperson said.
Bblbbitt! Yeah, a “new initiative” about every 11 months, with no connection to the previous ones. In other words, “When we say; ‘data portability’ we mean ‘frustrating divisions between our product and enormous chunks of the market as a whole’”. Seriously. If you work with Microsoft software you know that it isn’t even compatible with itself over more than two iterations. I can open a Word 6.0 file on my Linux machine more easily than I can on my Windows box.
Google will be the new microsoft, they have so much money they can invest they can buy any promising technology on a whim so they will snap up anything that has a chance of being successful they will be the new microsoft.