16 September, 2009

Google scraps "lock-in" effect

I just love it when internal Google-projects go public. It's a thrill-ride every time, because of their ingenious engineers.

This time round, it's all about moving data in and out of Google applications. They see it as only fair to be able to bring your own generated data into the "Googleplex", or migrate data out of it, for usage elsewhere.

Thus, they started "The Data Liberation Front" as a support-group for this task.
The engineers have also started a blog to make it possible to send in "liberation-requests" (what type of data to liberate, and why it should be liberated).

One of the main reasons why Google created this group, is to eliminate the "lock-in" effect in their products. To put it bluntly, they're ACTUALLY GIVING YOU THE ABILITY TO LEAVE GOOGLE AS A SERVICE-PROVIDER!

Yes, they either have ENORMOUS trust in their user-base, or they just really believe in their product-lines (I think it's the latter). And this is THE reason why I favour Google over other proprietary web-service providers. They have always tried to keep their framework as open as possible.

Heck, I even remember a period when they hosted (what I like to call) "hackathon"-servers. Providing a LEGAL method of network-hacking/-penetration, just for the fun of it (or whas it... :P)

I consider Google Inc to be the ONLY big-time computer/web-technology giant that tries to comply with the saying: "the true meaning of hack".

Link:
http://www.dataliberation.org/

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