Zittrain to Web 2.0 Geeks: FIGHT Google, Facebook, Apple Lockdown
By DONNA BOGATIN • Apr 13th, 2008 • Category: CONFERENCE CIRCUIT
As is so often the Google case, “free” services come at a very high price indeed. Ditto for Facebook.
When Mark Zuckerberg unleashed F8 platform to the world last May, Esther Dyson enthused to prospective Web 2.0 startups: “throw out your development, go use Facebook.” Dyson’s rationale at the time: “It doesn’t matter if you are better, what matters is that you are standard.”
Nevertheless, while the technology world heaped unconditional love on a sandal-clad Zuckerberg, I underscored the inherent risks of building businesses dependent upon a Facebook “social graph“ fueled by an anti-social Zuckerberg Terms Of Use: I warned developers of a Facebook “wolf in sheep‘s clothing” upon the unveiling of F8.
What’s more, the supposedly inevitable Facebook “standard” soon faced Google fueled pressure for Web-wide social “standards” favoring a “Goolgey” brand of “OpenSocial” graph.
Professor Jonathan Zittrain shares my concerns over the “unsettling” kinds of unilateral control technology leaders Google, Facebook and Apple hold over developers wooed by touted “open” platforms. He lamented how third-party applications are at risk of authoritarian monitoring, manipulation, and/or elimination from powerful central sources, at the presentation in New York City last Friday for his book, “The Future of the Internet, And How to Stop It.”
I pointed out Google‘s onerous Terms Of Use for its new App Engine upon launch last week, warning “How Google App Engine Kills Startups, Tricks Consumers.”
ZIttrain also signaled the dangers of development on the Google Apps Engine, in making the case for his theory of how the core “generative” nature of the Internet is “on a path to lockdown.”
Unilateral control by large corporations risks ending the Web innovation cycle, Zittrain says:
Ipods and iPhones are representative of the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances,” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away.
New Web 2.0 platform applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC the very nature of the Internet, its “generativity,” or innovative character, is at risk.
I asked Zittrain what technology entrepreneurs ought to do to help “stop” the future of the Internet from playing out as he portends. Zittrain told me he believes it is time for developers to “get smart” and fight back against the continuous regulation and control imposed by Google, Facebook, Apple: “Create a manifesto, demand X.,Y,Z.,” from the platform owners, Zittrain advises.
Why do developers willingly give up autonomy and control of their own work, to the heavy hands of corporations pursuing their own self-interested technology agendas? Even though developers’ applications may be unilaterally “turned into bricks” at any time by platform owners, geeks love to geek out on new cool things, Zittrain indicated.
Entrepreneurs ought to be freaking out, however, if they have allowed their Web-based businesses to be subject to the high-powered, discretionary corporate whims of Google, Facebook, and/or Apple, platforms.
Aux armes, netizens!
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DONNA BOGATIN is the Founder & CEO of STARTUP ALPHA
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Zittrain’s book starts out with a factual error - that Apple’s iPhone allows no custom app development.
I know dead tree versions of text are tough to keep up to date, but still…