November 13th, 2007
Google playing proprietary games with open source?
Is Google starting to play proprietary games with open source?
It certainly seems that way. Google could have based its Android phone project on Java, but that wasn’t good enough. Google could have offered any of several desktop Linux distros, but none were good enough.
Then the lawyers came in. Google gets its anti-spam technique patented. Their graphical user interface is patented.
I’m old enough to remember when vendors tweaked their Web browsers for proprietary advantage. I’m even old enough to remember when vendors did the same thing with DOS (although I don’t look it).
I doubt there is evil intent here. Google feels too big to get full benefit from being part of an open source community. When they focus on anything they become the 800 pound gorilla in the room. When the profits are distributed they get the lion’s share.
But this is a phase. Google’s market cap of nearly $200 billion is becoming Microsoft-like. (Big Green is still $110 billion ahead.) Minor tweaks, “exclusive” features are an essential part of that game, if you’re to stay invaluable. Or so Wall Street thinks.
Wall Street, as usual, is wrong.
Yahoo’s play, when it was in this market position a decade ago, was to try and buy everything on the board. Google has been relatively circumspect, even timid, perhaps learning what happened to its predecessor.
Its challenge remains to find revenue streams beyond Web advertising that can justify a price-earnings multiple of 50, that continue its profit and revenue growth beyond where Web ads alone can take it.
In that effort, Google needs all the friends it can get. Including friends in the open source movement.
My suggestion is that they stop tweaking.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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