Google Opens to Futher the “Platform Wars”

Richard MacManus noticed an interesting phenomenon which has begun in the past few months: Google has been opening to bloggers and to developers. MacManus mentioned that both of these things suspiciously happened around the same time. This week the Google I/O Conference is taking place out west. The event was only announced a month ago making it difficult for people (including myself) to make it to the event.

What seems to be happening is that Google has finally realized that they are competing for developers’ time, even those that they are not employing. After seeing thousands of Facebook developers build over 26,000 applications in a year, it’s no wonder that the company has become heavily invested in the fight for developer attention.

It is a battle not just for developers but also for alliances of developers among the various clouds or numerous “miasma” as Bill Thompson describes. These virtual storage centers are becoming their own nation states seeking alliances with none other than the developers. It’s as if the developers will pledge their allegiance to a single company even though they are not employees of the company.

It’s a battle for the hearts of people like Jesse Stay who is probably one of the most enthusiastic developers I have met. If they can win the hearts of people like Jesse, who have figured out a way to survive by building applications on Google and Facebook’s platforms, they will be further along the path for dominance. It’s a battle over attention and it’s being fought in the media and at conferences. This is why Google has opened up and it’s why we will see the continuation of this open embrace of media and developers.