http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/11/google_open
In the span of just two weeks, Google has launched two major open source efforts with a ragtag group of partners, both without any obvious or immediate payoff for Google itself.
It's a classic move: A giant company, looking to dominate a market where it has little presence, spins out an ostensibly collaborative project that it hopes will give it a foot in the door. IBM, Sun, Novell and even Microsoft have all played the open source card this way in the past, with varying degrees of success. In Google's case, the potential payoff is huge, albeit in the distant future, and the immediate risks are low. In the best-case scenario, Google gains entrance to lucrative mobile and social-networking markets. Worst case? Its collaborative projects fade into irrelevance with little damage to Google's reputation or bottom line.
Google's first open source play, OpenSocial, is an interoperable toolkit for building social networking apps. It aims to make the lives of widget and app developers a little easier. At the same time it lets Google indirectly challenge its major social networking competitor: Facebook.
The other open project, which comprises a group of handset makers, carriers and silicon manufacturers, is dubbed the Open Handset Alliance. It centers around a new, Linux-based mobile operating system for smartphones, called Android. It's Google's long-awaited play for the mobile space...................
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