InsideGoogle

Google vs. Microsoft: Flame War!

Last week, I noted some back-and-forth blogging between Google’s Adam Bosworth and MSN’s Dare Obasanjo. Well, ladies and gents, it has gotten nasty…

Adam Bosworth - “We all stand on the shoulders of giants“:

This post was savaged by an odd alliance; the shrill invective of the Microsoft apparachiks perhaps sensing an opportunity to take the focus away from Ballmer’s remorseless attack on all that is not Microsoft…
who see fit to attack Google…
a position that ignores common sense, reason, and civility.
It would seem that these cacophonous critics, yammering about giving back and sweepingly ignoring the 100’s of billions of times people use and appreciate what Google gives them for free every day from Search to Scholar to Blogger to gMail to Picasa, do not understand this basic fact.
a sign of hubris, arrogance, and immaturity.
And the fact that the critics of the earlier post seem to understand none of this suggests a world view so narrow minded as to make one gasp in wonder and horror.

Dare Obasanjo - “More on Google and Open Source“:

It seems Adam Bosworth’s position is that Google gives back to the Open Source community by not charging for accessing Google or Blogger. This seems to imply that advertising supported services like MSN Search, Hotmail and MSN Spaces are some sort of charity as opposed to the businesses they actually are.

Also, Dare says in Adam’s comments:

do we have to wait till the rumored Google branded Firefox browser ships before we find out.

Chris DiBona, Google’s Open Source project manager, referring back to Kowalczyk’s original post:

Thinking that google doesn’t give back to open source is uninformed and , well, lazy.

While Kowalczyk responds on his blog:

I did ask on my weblog for pointers to Google’s contributions. Despite temporary popularity of my blog, no-one sent me any.
I’ve read all the weblog posts commenting on my piece and no-one else in blogosphere was any less ignorant or lazy.All that leads me to believe that Google’s contribution, if not a mythical creature, is not that easy to find.
Chris promises a list of Google’s contributions in “coming months”. I would rather have it now. The good thing about promising to do something months from today is that you don’t have to do it. You can just rely on the fact that everybody will forget that you’ve made such promise.

Am I a bastard for enjoying this?

Oh, and because I have the conch, my opinion: Everybody shut up! Both companies have their faults when it comes to open source, and both companies have very good reasons to be evil enemies of open source. Yet, despite that, both companies have done the most they can to give back and work with open source; the most that companies with employees that have families to feed can. I think its a pointless arguement, and no one is going to win it.

January 2nd, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | 8 comments