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Folllowing up on yesterday's entry, RoughType sees the situation as a conflict between the technology and ideology of the Net, which puts a premium on openness and intersite mobility, and the commercial dictates of a revenue model based on advertising, which forces a site proprietor to try to keep eyeballs from straying.
Much has been made of the ease of launching Web 2.0 sites - the costs of the equipment are relatively low and most of the necessary coding is relatively simple. But for entrepreneurs, that cuts both ways. It's easy to launch a site that, by capitalizing on the net's open technological structure, "plugs into" other popular sites, drawing users that can then be fed ads, but it's also easy for the popular sites to incorporate new services and tools, in effect blocking the exits. He also notes:
The same tension can be seen influencing Google's evolution, though with a twist. On the one hand, Google's very existence hinges on the technological openness of the net. On the other hand, as an advertising-driven operation, Google has strong economic incentives to keep users on its own property. . . . And so we see Google perform an exquisite balancing act, supporting openness while also extending its own tools and services, through acquisition and in-house development. Google would never say what Chernin said, but its strategy in the end is not so different from the one Chernin laid out.
posted by James DeLong @ 6:00 AM | Standards
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