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An open letter to Google

Friday, November 20, 2009 by Dave Winer.

I had an interesting but somewhat disturbing exchange with a Google guy on Twitter today. It reveals a bunch of disconnects, that I'm going to try, in this post, to address.  

1. Please take these statements at face value.  

2. I am just a person, I am not in competition with Google.  

3. I am a Google user. My primary email account is on GMail. I just bought a Droid, and started a Droid blog to help other people get started. I like it primarily because it connects so well with Google services. 

4. I am a former Google shareholder. I made a shitload of money from my Google investment. Thank you.  

5. I think Google is a big company. I think the people at Google, like most people everywhere, mean well. Like every big organization there are some who don't mean well. But I judge each individual as a person. I don't assume because a person works at Google that they are good or bad or otherwise. 

6. I don't have the first clue what it's like to be inside Google, and honestly I don't care.  

7. Now about PubSubHubBub. When I first looked at it I saw Atom all over it. I quickly hit the Back button. 

8. There was a time when I seriously considered implementing it. But it required me to understand concepts I didn't understand and had no interest in investing in. It seemed to me that I would have to reimplement a lot of stuff I already had working. This is something big companies ask you to do a lot of.  

9. One of the reasons I revitalized rssCloud was to influence Google to support RSS better in PSHB. 

10. One of the clues that PSHB needs to be reconstructed is that it's so hard to describe. What's needed here is easy to explain: Instant updates for RSS. If you think RSS is a bad choice of terms, do some research. The world sees it that way. If you make that more general, you lose people. They get confused. PSHB is very very confusing to people. That hinders adoption. 

11. Fostering adoption of complex technologies is something I know a lot about. I'm very good at it. You can ignore me if you want, but I usually am right about this stuff.  

12. Switching gears, I like the Internet because it means I can ignore big companies and still create meaningful software.  

13. I think Google doesn't like RSS. I see that in a lot of things Google does.  

14. I wish Google would give up on fighting RSS. I think it's pointless. I don't think defeating or blunting or obviating RSS has anything to do with Google's business. 

15. You can argue with me on any of these points, but remember #2. If you convince me I'm wrong (which is unlikely, btw, I'm no different than anyone else in that regard), you still have just convinced one person.  

16. All this disclaimed, we have a common interest, I think. I don't want to pretend to speak for Google, so I don't want to try to say what that is.