The Google Story

Google wants to make the Internet the platform to deliver software services.

Before the advent of Internet, developing an operating system was the means to creating a platform to run software. The OS provided all the services a developer would need, right from disk services up to complex security services, all provided as APIs. The problem is that, nobody wants another operating system in the market. There are already enough operating systems as there are enough guys hitting on your girlfriend in the local bar.

The genius of Google is in identifying the Internet as a platform for services. And creating web APIs.

Google is building a rich set of APIs and services deployed on the Internet, because, it is not the platform which matters any more; it is the APIs for the developers and services for users, which matter. It doesn't matter if the user has a Windows or Linux or Mac; all that matters is that if he has a browser which can access various services, be it a Mail service or a Map service or a Weather service or a Game service.

Now that the Internet is truly ubiquitous, people are starting to innovate and come up novel ideas to everyday problems. Eg. If I were living in Chicago and would like to know which areas of Chicago are safe to travel, all I need to do is visit the site, http://www.chicagocrime.org. A creative developer has come up with the idea of mashing up google maps with the Chicago crime database. I can view the crime rates of all the areas within Chicago. So it is all limited to the creativity and business sense of oneself to provide solutions such as these.

I still don't understand the economics of creating web APIs and providing them free of cost. But that's an entirely different story, for another day.