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.
For its own part, the Mountain View, California, company remains tight-lipped (or at least purposefully vague) about the underlying business strategies behind both efforts. But one thing is clear: Google is using its clout to pave new roads into two of the hottest technology destinations today: social networking and the mobile internet.
Many are suspicious of Google's motivations -- and even of its use of the open source approach. Mozilla's chief operating officer John Lilly warns that just because Google happens to be using the term "open" in both of its initiatives, that doesn't necessarily make them so.
"For [Mozilla], the real test of 'open' doesn't speak to source code or even alliances," Lilly says of his nonprofit organization. "It's about shared leadership and shared decision-making."
On that front, Lilly says it's still too early to tell if the OHA or OpenSocial will prove to be truly collaborative efforts. "You have Google releasing a lot of source code under an open alliance," Lilly says, "but can other companies have a say in what shape the project ultimately takes?"
Google, of course, isn't the first tech giant to tinker with open source projects. IBM, for example, released its programming environment, Eclipse, under an open source license in 2001. The platform has gone on to become a major industry standard and has helped IBM compete with Microsoft more effectively for developers' hearts and minds.
For the OHA, the fragmented and dysfunctional mobile market is an opportunity ripe for the picking.
"No one will deny that the (mobile) ecosystem, in many ways, was broken," says Richard Miner, a key member of Android's technical staff. "I think carriers realize that there's a need for a more-open platform that's easily accessible. People will see that you can have it open and support other initiatives and other business models."
Chris Hazelton, a senior analyst for IDC's mobile devices group, agrees with Miner, and says Google seems to be on the right track with the OHA and Android.
"This is a vastly underserved space now, and by creating its own platform, Google's Android could be huge," says Hazelton.
Despite dismissive comments from the likes of Symbian, ARM and Microsoft, this was a canny move, Hazelton says of the OHA.
"This was a very smart play in a very complicated market," Hazelton says, adding that partnerships are key in the mobile industry. Currently, there's no dominant mobile OS in the United States. While Symbian has a huge market share internationally, it hasn't taken root stateside, Hazelton says. And in that sense, the mere announcement of Android gives Google a huge advantage in terms of mindshare.
Going open source with Android also gives Google an advantage with carriers. Despite the absence of big players like AT&T and Verizon in the OHA, many carriers are starting to realize that Google can drive data usage on mobile devices through the roof. That potentially means more money for carriers.
But Hazelton still warns that despite open-sourcing its development, Android will likely take years to evolve into something competitive, even with the Google alliance in place.
"This is not an overnight thing," he says. "The smartphone market is rapidly growing when compared to the rest of the mobile market. In a couple years, Google's Android could be pretty successful because of this open strategy. But even if Android doesn't take off, or there isn't a big enough commitment, what will happen is, the smartphone will still evolve."
And there's little doubt that people will use their smartphones, Android-based or not, to access their favorite Google applications, the Google search page and web pages carrying Google advertising.
In other words, for Google, it's a win-win situation.
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