DISQUS

Robin Wauters · 2 years ago

Another case in point for 'Google Open' is its investment in FON, the free wi-fi sharing project from Europe.

ivanpope · 2 years ago

Matthew,
You write "Right now, the mobile sphere is where the Internet was back in the early 1990s — it’s a morass of proprietary standards and walled-garden content, combined with the most usurious fees since the department-store credit card was invented."
But the internet never was this. Maybe online was, with a lot of proprietary databases and online systems. But the internet never had proprietary standards and walled-garden content. That was and is the glory of it. Unless I missed something? Ivan

Barry Welford · 2 years ago

The problem is that Rogers hasn't even pushed the iPhone here in Canada and charges exhorbitant rates for access to the Mobile Web. Since Rogers will be coat-tailing AT&T who will probably not join in on the Open Handset Alliance, we in Canada will be even farther away from where it's all happening. Pity ...

Rick · 2 years ago

I absolutely concur with Ivan. In fact, the success of the internet is based on that fundamentally open architecture. What you are talking about are the alternatives back then, the walled gardens of AOL and Compuserve.

Mobile phone makers and operators are still trying to pretend that piece of history never happened, or that they can reverse history. In that way, this is the same issue as Facebook versus Open Social. It's a battle that has been raging ever since the breakthrough of the internet, on various fronts.

And there are still some battles to be fought: the internet desperately needs an open alternative to rich media stuff like Flash and streaming video, and get this out of the clutches of Adobe and Microsoft. And again, this is also directly in the interest of Google.

Looking forward to Googles next announcement... ;-)