Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is reporting about an ultra secret meeting that happened in 
) nor do I have access to them, but Mr. Arrington does. The discussion for the day: How do we take on Facebook?
How is Google going to take on Facebook? Open up even more than Facebook. Arrington uses the example, “If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.” Google will accomplish this by offering APIs, possibly as early as November 5th, which will give developers access to Google’s social graph data. They will start with iGoogle and their social network Orkut first, then give access to Gmail, Google Talk, and other Google applications.
Why will this make them more “open” than Facebook? As where Facebook requires the applications to be run on Facebook itself, these new Google APIs will allow information to be taken and put in between third parties apps that are not hosted on any Google platform. There lies the biggest difference. Apparently Google is extremely serious about this and has appointed many of it’s big guns to this project.
To me, it is interesting to see Google reacting to instead of creating the lead in this industry. Google is on the defense and scared of Facebook. And why shouldn’t they be? Facebook’s open platform was brilliant and as much as I sometimes do not like Mr. Zuckerberg, I have to give him props for that one. It will be interesting to see how successful Google is on this crusade. Will they succeed? With Facebook answer back and allow the same type of openness? Only time will tell.
