monopoly (2)
The money matters
A project can be a good solution for a problem but if it has no financial support it will disappear. This happens specially in the world of software.
I would like to talk about one of the most famous open source web browsers currently, Firefox.
It comes from a hard battle against Internet Explorer. After many years fighting it seems that FF is gaining more and more supporters. In deed, FF got money from Google for long time to remain in the battlefield.
But now Google has changed his mind launching his own browser, open source and crossplatform too. This implies that Chromium (or Chrome is the close version) is a direct competitor of FF.
The money now will go to improve Chromium instead of FF. I hope this won't stop FF from being the good alternative it is.
This week, after knowing some of the Oracle's plans about Sun's products, this situation could be spread to projects like Virtualbox or Netbeans. The game is the same, just the players change.
2010-01-30 16:10 by pichulines (0 comments)
Google Land
Today Google has announced a new programming language (Go). They already announced a new web browser (Chrome), a new operating system (Android), cloud services (App Engine) and other well-known services. They have choosen the main pillars in the tech world and they have built their own versions.
They could create an unexisting service or even more, improve an existing project. But they decided to reinvent the wheel. For sure this is according to their interests.
So what happens with that friendly face they showed at the beginning that now it's turning to a controller face.
Google ensures they contribute to the open source and also they use it. But this is not sustainable for such a powerful company. They have the ability of reach the user through manufacturers, through internet, millions of them. The effects of using and participating in the open source world are not the same as a medium or small company.
I'm not saying this with rage and regret, they have done a lot for all. They offer good services and for free, helping to understand and define the net. But now that has turned into a dependency for the user. Microsoft did it the same. They allowed the medium user access to the technology and computers, they tried to charge for it but that was the way of doing business at that time.
Ladies and gentlemen, Google is the new Microsoft, Google is internet for the end user.
2009-11-11 17:53 by pichulines (0 comments)