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Steve's Google Platform rant

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Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#12

Post by bambax »

What he says about Chrome doesn't seem to be really true?

> And so we wind up with a browser that doesn't let you set the default font size

You can set the default font size and zoom size in Chrome (chrome://settings/advanced then "Web Content").

But more to the point, although it's obvious Google Search is trying very hard NOT to be a platform, it would seem Chrome is already a platform.

No other browser in history has had a more straightforward way to build extensions -- and, for that matter, apps.

Also, Yahoo is not mentioned; Yahoo built many nice platforms (remember Pipes?) and it didn't quite save them.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#15

Post by abbott »

which came first, the product or the platform? I remember when twitter switched over their public site and services to run on their API. Instagram just built theirs earlier this year. If the platform has an outage, so does the product. It's tough to justify a platform until you have traction, and unfortunately the industry track record reflects this.

Excellent insights in Steve's post.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#17

Post by jasoncrawford »

wouterinho wrote: post #10
nirvana wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not true at all, at least thru 2007. At that time, there were some minor services that made some use of AWS services, mostly newer things that had been created after AWS was created. AWS was not available to developers within Amazon to use at any time before the day it was publicly launched. At least not on a broad basis, and none of the main Amazon.com services ran on it in 2007. They did share some data ce…

Interesting... any current Amazon employee that can confirm/deny this? Perhaps things have changed since 2007.

When I left in early 2007 they were working on the transition. More recently I heard that they were substantially if not totally on the AWS infrastructure. So if Werner said it recently it probably is true.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#18

Post by catch23 »

bambax wrote: post #12

What he says about Chrome doesn't seem to be really true? > And so we wind up with a browser that doesn't let you set the default font size You can set the default font size and zoom size in Chrome (chrome://settings/advanced then "Web Content"). But more to the point, although it's obvious Google Search is trying very hard NOT to be a platform, it would seem Chrome is already a platform. No other browser in history…

Well like steve mentioned -- you can't just have a platform and hope it will save you. You need a killer app on top first...

The only killer app I can think of from yahoo is mail & flickr.

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