drinking the kool-aid
October 4, 2007 - 8:54 AM
I have been in SF for about 8 weeks now and have been to the Google campus twice already. A week or two ago they invited a couple of people from Digg down to their campus for a little demo. If you haven't heard yet in early November they will be launching an updated version of their gadgets aka "gadgets 2.0". What is this really? Well their API will have new function calls like .getFriends() and .addFriend() as well as a few other things. It would appear that Google is getting into the "social" scene.
For those who have never been to the Google campus it can be a bit intimidating for someone, especially for one just out of the mitten state. They have free just about everything, food, drink, they even have "Google Pizza".
We sat down and listened to their talk and everyone seemed pretty excited about the ideas they were discussing. But as the conversation progressed something started to nag me in the back of my mind. It wasn't until after the meeting and on my way back to the city that I was able to figure out what it was.
They kept talking about this third party integration down the line but I wonder if they were in fact serious about it. It would be great for Google to create an open API that anyone could use, storing a persons "social graph". Then open this to participating sites so that when I register for a new service I can enter my information and that service can then download my friends information so that I don't have to search and add everyone all over again. Google has the resources to create something like this and this API is a half step in that direction. I am just waiting for them to finish that step, then I can stop worrying.
