The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/22/dziuba_anti_revolution/

by jwilliams • 18 years ago

27 37 18 years ago

theregister.co.uk

ricree3• 18 years ago

Am I missing something with the whole "OpenID is hard" thing? As far as I've used it, OpenID has pretty much consisted of going through a fairly normal registration with the open ID provider, getting a login name url, and then just using that at sites that support openID.

At most, it's been marginally more complicated than a normal ID, but it saves me the trouble of creating yet another new account at every little site that seems like it might be interesting to check out for a few minutes.

maxklein7• 18 years ago

Yes, you're missing it because you are unable to move out of your personal perspective into the perspective of less computer capable people.

OpenID is hard and pointless. It deserves to die.

ricree3• 18 years ago

In all seriousness, though, what's the part that's such a stumbling block here (at least for anyone who is already computer literate enough to go through a normal user account creation)? I really fail to see why "now create an account you can use at any OpenID site" is so much of a problem compared to "create an account for this site". In my experience, the account creation is nearly the same, and the login procedure is nearly the same, so I have a hard time seeing where a problem would occur.

sachinag• 18 years ago

This is the thing: the "yet another new account" thing isn't a problem for real users. Real users use the same damn user/pass on every site. This is terrible for their security, but it just works.

tptacek• 18 years ago

Of the minority of users who have enough accounts on web applications to care, only a small fraction have accounts they care about that are ever likely to support OpenID.

I don't think most users see this account/password thing as one of their major Internet challenges.

theschwa• 18 years ago

This is about the winiest thing I've ever read with no real content.

"Unfortunately, excitement died off quickly as people remembered that they don't really give a shit about social networks."

Really? So, those 100 million or so for facebook myspace and orkut don't count?

unalone• 18 years ago

They care about one social network at a time, at most.

People don't give a fuck about anything social outside of Facebook. Not most people.

jasonlbaptiste• 18 years ago

I couldnt have said it better. Get past the whining and hyperbole... but try and prove anything he said wrong.

OpenID- pipe dream. Clickpass is the only shot of making it work.

OpenSocial- Anyone actually make real live open social apps? Anyone making a real business or gain with them? At least facebook apps were able to do that for a good while.

Gears- Not sure why this is lobbed in there, except for the fact it isn't too widely implemented.

alaskamiller2• 18 years ago

Gears will win out of the sheer will of force -- a.k.a Google's war chest. Considering that it's only been in development for about a year makes calling a pipe dream premature.

OpenSocial and Android both plays the heel to the the bigger and better counterparts. But like all things in life, it's much better to have decent alternative than none at all. They may not ever achieve dominant positioning but they don't have to, no one will outright give up on them.

OpenID is just weird but god bless those folks that keep wanting to get a crack with this.

jwilliams• 18 years ago

My first reaction was "no - gears has been out for ages"... but no, you're totally right.

Gears + Android might be an interesting play for Google as well. http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/power-up-you...

maxklein7• 18 years ago

Let me tell you why clickpass fails. After seeing your comment about clickpass, I decided to go try it. So I went there and the initial frontpage pitch was really nice. So I clicked on my google account. It showed me my different google accounts. Nice. I clicked next, and then it asked me if it should be allowed to access contacts. Hella NO! Why should I give clickpass access to my google contacts. So I figured I'd still be able to login without that. Umm, no, it tells me the process failed.

This is the fault of google, but what can clickpass do? Google gives, google takes.

enomar• 18 years ago

Oh no. Some guy at The Register was able to point out 3 new technologies that haven't seen wide adoption. The world is ending. Google is a one hit wonder. San Fransisco is just a bunch of dumb hippies. OMG.

josefresco• 18 years ago

I'm sorry (I'd love to poop on this) but this little gem:

"Therefore, if you collect a bunch of Web 2.0 engineers in San Francisco, the inevitable outcome is the OpenSocial Foundation: a nonprofit organization that only exists to support an API for programming social network applications."

Is hilarious. +1

axod2• 18 years ago

Gears seems a very strange choice to put in here, especially now Chrome is out.

netcan2• 18 years ago

Because it has failed (thus far) to make a substantial impact on the way people use web apps.

How many people have it installed? How many sites have it enabled? What apps/sites exist & are popular that wouldn't be useful/popular without gears? What apps/sites exist that are replacing installed apps thanks to gears? For an example to count it needs to include more people outside the top 5% of internet users.

Personally I wouldn't call it a dud yet. It's mostly for readers, online office apps & calendar. These are used mostly by the top 5% anyway, so it'd be hard to take a stab outside that segment with Gears. Mail is the online app that has penetrated, but those that need off-line mail generally have a client installed already. It'll take time to move them since 'you don't need to install a client' isn't an incentive if you already have one. But this is a pretty big change they're trying to pull off. A lot of people are going to have trouble even finding gmail without a Google search.

Like I said, I wouldn't call it a dud. I wouldn't call it a success either. Like the post says, Chrome might bring it all together.

axod2• 18 years ago

"Like every other product Google has released since search and ads, OpenSocial has been a dud."

This is just plain wrong. Although maybe some of the issue comes when you compare things to search+ads. When compared against those, perhaps things look 'dud'. But taken alone they are successes.

omouse• 18 years ago

MySpace uses OpenSocial: http://developer.myspace.com/Community/forums/default.aspx?G...

MySpace has how many users again? Even if a tiny percentage of them interacts with OpenSocial, I would hardly call it a dud.

Also:

"There are many websites implementing OpenSocial, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING."

That is a lot of users that someone can reach with an OpenSocial app. If this is failure, I want some.

froo• 18 years ago

> "Like every other product Google has released since search and ads, OpenSocial has been a dud."

Talk about one's perspective being waaaaay off.

Gmail, Reader, Maps, Chrome, Groups, News, Orkut - all of these products have clearly been duds when you consider how profitable Google's search + ads business has been.

Then again by that same yardstick you could say that 99.99% of online businesses are complete duds, even though there are a lot of them out there that are quite profitable.

Look at Orkut, when compared to a Myspace or a Facebook it is an absolute dud, however with some perspective it is among the largest social networks in some of the world's fastest growing economies (Brazil, India) - not a bad position to be in whatsoever.

> No, a revolution means that somebody gets beheaded.

Well, then if that's the case, Google's search was definitely not a revolution. Sure it was an innovative product, but I still see Yahoo running around with a search team and with a still sizeable chunk of the search business (~25% isn't anything to scoff at whatsoever)

metatronscube• 18 years ago

Gears has huge potential. I have no idea why that's in there.

netcan2• 18 years ago

Because it hasn't reached it.

centuren• 18 years ago

"Good to be able to rant rant, nicer to somehow get links to even the silliest of them. His complaint about the buzz behind web development this days renders your use of "Web 2.0 engineers" an absolute absurdity (talk about having drunk the "Kool-Aid" you're complaining about). As for APIs, all developers use tools they find accessible and productive. Those they don't, they don't use. A string of social networking sites have brought in massive amounts of profits; it would be silly for the market to ignore that. However a particular Google product/service fares is always irrelevant, when considered against the bigger picture of their continuing growth and success as a business.

If he's asking why we should care about OpenSocial, OpenID, and Google Gears, he's a little too late; I don't care, not enough to find any interest in his post beyond a fascination with it's complete separation from anything relevant or substantial. Perhaps he'd like to complain about Google Web Toolkit next? I suppose he may have already. In any case, good job riding the Google hype to get hits on content so completely pointless!

Congratulations to Aaron Holesgrove for his comment also. His amusement at watching a company, whose search and ad SOFTWARE has so utterly blown away the competition and dominated the market, do something as bizarre as act like the software company they've ALWAYS been, is a fantastic blend of lack of comprehension and emotional reaction to hype.

This response was a mandatory attempt to reclaim the time lost here with a rant of my own, only tailored to the specific absurdities at hand."

Seriously! Who keeps posting these silly little blog entries that don't say anything? They are listed as though they contain valid content, and then are so short and pointless that it's impossible to abort reading them before they are over (and the stupidity is experienced).

If these somehow keep making it to the front page, I'm certainly going to leave this site out of my routine entirely.

dbrush• 18 years ago

Note that this article was written by the same guy that is behind Uncov.

nihilocrat• 18 years ago

Your headline is wrong, it's "Ted Dziuba, that guy who swears a lot while making macho comments about technology, slams x, y, and z".

That's not to say his arguments don't have merit, just take it with a grain of salt because he's getting an article on The Register /because/ of of the highly-critical-invective-filled-pretty-funny-to-read style. See also: Zeropunctuation reviews of video games.

nradov• 18 years ago

IBM has had a tool for building off-line web applications for many years. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/domino/dols.ht... It works OK, but never really caught on even among customers who already have Lotus Domino. Seems to be a solution in search of a problem. So I'm not surprised that Google Gears uptake has been slow.

The Register slams OpenSocial, OpenID and Google Gears - "destined for the dustbin"

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