Google says: In your FACEbook with it’s new API
September 22, 2007 – 9:47 amGoogle’s goal - to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.
The short version: Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. They’ll start with Orkut and iGoogle (Google’s personalized home page), and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time.
On November 5 we’ll likely see third party iGoogle gadgets that leverage Orkut’s social graph information - the most basic implementation of what Google is planning. From there we may see a lot more - such as the ability to pull Orkut data outside of Google and into third party applications via the APIs. And Google is also considering allowing third parties to join the party at the other end of the platform - meaning other social networks (think Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, Digg and thousands of others) to give access to their user data to developers through those same APIs. And that is a potentially killer strategy. Facebook has a platform to allow third parties to build applications on Facebook itself. But what Google may be planning is significantly more open - allowing third parties to both push and pull data, into and out of Google and non-Google applications.
Think facebook API and facebook apps, times them by ten, and then you come up with what will be the ultimate API. This is huge for small sites like Collaboradate, and bad for large sites like Match.com and Yahoo personals. This will be an API that embraces openness and gives the finger to paid and closed. Thanks Google! Just for that I don’t mind you flying your jet in and out of Moffett Field.
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