Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Social networks are still too closed
LOS ANGELES--Speaking at IBM's Business Partner Leadership Conference here, Google CEO Eric Schmidt reiterated his position that social networks are still too closed. "If it's not searchable by Google, it's not open, and open is best for the consumer," he said.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes that people should be able to move from place to place on the Web with their data.
He added that "searchable by Google" means also searchable by other search engines, such as Yahoo. "People should be able to move from place to place, and their data is available everywhere," Schmidt said. "Social networks are a real phenomenon of people living their lives online, and it has has legs. We will have to deal with it as a society."
Google has focused efforts on creating code, such as the open source OpenSocial APIs and the Social Graph API, to make social data more portable and accessible to applications. So far, Facebook is the only major social network that has not endorsed the OpenSocial initiative, which is now managed by an independent organization, the OpenSocial Foundation.
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Social networking,
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Google
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Google,
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Eric Schmidt,
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OpenSocial
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How we forget only 50 years ago...
OK blogger jounalist- you reported the words.. now do the work.
CONTEXT.
Should Google should have a process by which people claim their data and assert rights over it...complicated but worth discussion...
I know some people five years younger than me might not feel this way, but I find it very comforting to know that if anybody were to Google my real name (as opposed to the name I use to post on tech blogs) the only thing they would learn is that there are lots of people with the same name as me.
The last thing I'd want is to not get hired because i wrote some anti-Windows Vista tirade last year.
Their mission can rather be stated as to "organize the world?s information and make it universally accessible to Google". Whether the worlds information then becomes available to the masses, or even useful to the masses, is of secondary interest to Google and is driven by the question "what is in it for Google".
Even if all of the worlds social networks were available to Google, they would not NECESSARILY be available to everyone. Were such information indexed and stored on Google servers, it would end up being used internally by Google and made available to the U.S. domestic spying agencies.
Certainly the domestic "law enforcement" agencies have a priority before the masses in determining what information is collected and made available to whom. That in fact serves Googles interests far more than making it possible for the Joe Sixpacks of the U.S. to find information about some Jane Does.
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by sent2null
May 5, 2008 5:14 AM PDT
- Dan,
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Reply to this comment
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1 | 2 | Next 10 Comments >>Do you have a link to the original conference video or transcript ? so that we can ensure preservation of context was ensured in the quotes you provided. The veracity of your paraphrasing of his statements would be bolstered if we could immediately and directly confirm the context from the actual transcript. The hyper linking media makes such context preservation a trivial matter and would solidify the credulity of your report.
Thanks
sent2null