Google Buys iPhone Search App, Kills It 223
Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports that Google has acquired a popular iPhone application called reMail that provides 'lightning fast' full-text search of your Gmail and IMAP e-mail accounts. The app downloads copies of all your e-mail which can then be searched with various Boolean options. reMail has only been in the application store for about six months — with a free version limited to one Gmail account and a premium version which can connect to multiple accounts. 'Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail's iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store,' writes company founder Gabor Cselle, who will be returning to Google as a Product Manager on the Gmail team. Google isn't saying what the fate of reMail might be. Some are suggesting reMail could be integrated into Gmail search or live on in some form as a part of Android, Google's mobile platform. Another possibility is that Google may have snapped up reMail just to kill it, not because reMail was a competitor to anything Google had, but because reMail made the iPhone better or the acquisition may have more to do with keeping good search technology away from the competition, as opposed to an attempt to undercut the iPhone. 'Perhaps Google is just planning to buy up all the iPhone developers, one at a time, until Android is the only game in town,' writes Bill Ray at the Register."
Fate? (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll be "re-incorporated" into some distant version of gmail.
Otherwise, buying an app like this and not using it is a complete and utter waste of time.
Re:Fate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise, buying an app like this and not using it is a complete and utter waste of time.
They hired the developer, though, and it's not necessarily a waste of time to deprive a competitor of a good application either.
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It's the app store, 20 clones will pop up soon enough.
Like I said, it'll be incorporated into some version of gmail down the line. (My guess anyway)
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It's not identical, I'm sure, but it's been out for a long time already. It's called DeepFish http://www.webis.net/products_info.php?p_id=deepfish [webis.net]
Too complicated.. (Score:3, Informative)
DeepFish is complicated - too many options. Something only a nerd would love. What was nice about reMail was simplicity, like Google itself.
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Can you imagine that? One day you're just another developer of an email app on the iPhone and you get a call from Google saying "HI we're GOOGLE and we like your app. We'd like to hire you as the Product Manager of the GMAIL Team and buy your app from you. How does that sound?"
Think I'd have a permanent smile for a few weeks
Re:Fate? (Score:5, Funny)
That's a mighty small value of "permanent".
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That's a mighty small value of "permanent".
You're unfailing, poignant logic would make you the ideal candidate to work at Google.
Re:Fate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google tends not to play like that. They actively encourage competition and feel it's good for the marketplace.
--I got pegged as a microsoft marketing droid once by an AC, Now I just need my Google, linux and Apple "fanboy" creds...
Re:Fate? (Score:4, Informative)
He seems to have some experience on the gmail team at least, he was an intern there when Google started developing it.
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Google's efforts to engineer humans to make them better consumers of their products is not the first.
Apple has already managed to modify their customers to give them limp wrists, and Microsoft modifies their customers by tearing them new assholes.
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Unless I'm missing something, I don't see why some other enterprising young programmer couldn't produce a similar iPhone app to fill the void. Or that Apple could fold the notion into their mail program (I presume iPhone has an Apple mail widget or app).
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It also (in the 3.x OS releases) has a Spotlight-like search feature
If it really is like Spotlight, then there's probably still a good market for third-party search apps...
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Re:Fate? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct it is a very Microsoft kind of thing to do. This is definately in the realm of embrace-extend-extinguish.
BTW: Note to Google, embrace-extend-extinguish is evil.
Its looking more and more like its well past time for Google to admit that the "Don't be evil." slogan no longer applies anymore.... If it ever really did.
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This isn't embrace extend and extinguish though. There aren't very many good examples, but two more recent ones are:
HTML - Microsoft embraced it, then added extensions to it (Active X), and then after bundling it with the most popular OS on the planet it became a widely used standard. So much so that there are still apps out there that only run on IE (SAP client for example).
Java - Microsoft embraced Java (there was a time when IE had Java support built right in!), they added some extensions to it that only
Re:Fate? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct it is a very Microsoft kind of thing to do. This is definately in the realm of embrace-extend-extinguish.
Wrong. Embrace-Extend-Extinguish is when you Embrace a competitor's product/standard, Extend it in ways incompatible with the original product, and Extinguish it by pushing your own product so hard in the minds of consumers it is you, and not your competitor or the standards body, who determines what's the standard to follow.
What Microsoft tried to do with HTML before Firefox, and Java before the anti-trust lawsuit are E-E-E. Arguably, what Apple, Nokia and Google are trying to do with h.264 and HTML5 is also E-E-E. But simply buying a company that makes a popular product for a competing platform isn't E-E-E, it's just business as usual and examples of such are plentiful in the corporate world.
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Actually it's a very IBMish kind of thing to do. Unlike you, I have an actual example - Rational Visual Test.
Buy competition, kill competition (Score:2, Insightful)
And with that, the troll/flame mods can post their displeasure for my anti-Google statement.
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Reddit's moderation system? Are you kidding me? It sucks balls compared to Slashdot's.
lulz (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like a case of Google in a Microsoft's clothing.
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More like IBM... as far as phone development goes, it's like Android is the Linux of phone platforms (err, wait).
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Your metaphor is backwards unless you mean to say that Google is wolf-like and Microsoft is sheep-like.
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In 2010, Google being wolf-like and Microsoft being sheep-like is EXACTLY what I meant.
Re:lulz (Score:4, Interesting)
GPLv2: I know my rights; I want my phone call!
The right to a phone call is a TV police show myth. There is no such right. It is custom, but not a right, and by no means universal. In some jurisdictions, you may not make phone calls. You have the right to have someone notified, to the extent that you can summon counsel. If the police merely notify the public defender, they have satisfied every legal obligation.
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How do you know if you request to have "so and so" notified has been completed? Should they not have to provide proof that such a task was completed? Doing so in any other way then letting you have a phone call, or making the call on speaker phone or some other way for you to hear said conversation, just screams potential corruption and abuse to me.
A word of advice - don't get too worked up drawing conclusions based on what someone said on Slashdot.
Whack-a-Mole (Score:2)
Sounds like a case of Google in a Microsoft's clothing.
Even M$ in its heyday couldn't buy up every App Store gold rusher. But targeting a tactical weak-point, like email, that's something possible. I recall some quip about M$ disrupting the supply of 3.5" floppies to spoil the OS/2 launch.
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I know, right?! The colors, man....the colors.
Totally idiotic conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
Googles interest is to route as much traffic as possible to their services so that they can earn the ad revenues, now this application basically performed inbox searches without redirecting the user to gmail (where google would get the money from the ad revenues)
So they simply killed it because it did not bring them any revenues!
Re:Totally idiotic conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
That was what immediately occurred to me too. Google isn't being *very* evil, it's just trying to maintain its income base. I don't have (or even particularly want) an iPhone, but given Apple's various ways of pursuing its business model, evilness seems to mean different things to different people.
Just to be clear, I'm not particularly bashing Apple (I'm typing this on a MacBook I inherited from my wife when she upgraded to a more recent model), I'm just saying let's not be hypocrites.
How is this different from Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this different from Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Imagine a small town market place.
Scenario 1: The owner and landlord of the market invites all traders to come and sell goods in his market. However, he also owns a fish store. When a trader selling fish turns up, he refuses to let this trader into the market place. The other traders become worried that, someday, the owner and landlord of the market may stop them from trading on the market, too.
Scenario 2: A trader on the market sells a new type of hot dog. This hot dog is particularly tasty and quickly bec
Re:Totally idiotic conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why they killed POP access, too!
Oh, wait, no they didn't. [google.com]
Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting. Apple is the new Microsoft, except for Apple fanboys, who hold Google as the new Microsoft.
Re:Totally idiotic conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting. Apple is the new Microsoft, except for Apple fanboys, who hold Google as the new Microsoft.
It never ceases to amaze me when people are surprised when giant corporations behave like giant corporations.
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Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting.
Agreed. You can also still search IMAP accounts, the only difference is it's slower than this app since the app itself downloaded copies to the phone while native search searches the server. This has nothing to do with ad revenue.
Re:Totally idiotic conclusions (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot should be embarrassed for all the FUD they've been posting
You just summed up the last 10 years.
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[slashdot.org]
Well, there may already a hole in that: IMAP. I don't EVER hit Gmail's HTTPS address. Thunderbird accesses the gmail box and does all searches internally.
Of course, if an IMAP MUA uses the IMAP SEARCH command to search mailboxes, then GOOG's IMAP face can treat that input like it would a web-based search form entry, so if that's the case then their search-optimizing input overlord status is secure.
But other than Google's own feature-promotion spam, I see no advertising.
Re:Totally idiotic conclusions (Score:4, Informative)
So they simply killed it because it did not bring them any revenues!
But has Google actually killed access methods to G*, in the past, that didn't directly bring it revenue?
* Exhibit "A": IMAP for Gmail. Despite the lack of advertising revenue during IMAP sessions, Google provides free, quality IMAP service to all Gmail accounts.
* Exhibit "B": Mobile clients for Gmail: As with IMAP, the mobile Gmail clients (Blackberry, etc.) don't display any advertising to the user during mobile sessions.
In both the IMAP and mobile cases, Google actually spent time and money (engineering hours) building capacities that let people access Gmail with zero advertising. To the untrained idiot, this might see paradoxical: Why would Google spend money on things that don't directly generate revenue?
Of course, if you ponder it for a hot five seconds, the answer is pretty obvious: Good IMAP and mobile options can increase user adoption of Gmail, generally, because the end user finds more to use. This means more people will integrate Gmail more deeply into their lives, and the overall increased Gmail usage could very well drive up absolute web UI page views. The alternatives help get me hooked on Gmail, but in the end I spend more time logging in through the web UI because I'm just using Gmail all that much more. In the end, Google gets more ad views, and revenue increases.
There's a similar concept in retail called the "loss leader": You sell a popular item at below cost, and advertise the hell out of it, just to get people into your store. While they're in your store, they will are likely to buy other, non-sale (profit-making) items, too, since they're already there. Voila! Your revenue increases.
So who do you think you are, calling these suspicions totally idiotic? Google has suddenly broken with its past policies regarding alternative, non-ad-viewing Gmail interfaces. If you've been trusting Google in the past, due to their general friendliness to end users, this apparent change of heart is kind of alienating.
Re:Totally idiotic conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
And by that logic, they should be killing off all 3rd party mail client POP and IMAP inbox access for everyone in 3... 2...
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Google saw a good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
... and bought the company.
It is perfectly normal to pull the product temporarily to re-brand and redirect during an acquisition that is technically interesting but does not completely meet the company vision. Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:Google saw a good thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding. In related news, did you know that Delta bought Northwest Airlines, and now they're killing it off? Seriously. They're removing all the NWA planes, and replacing them with Delta planes. And soon you won't even be able to buy tickets on NWA, you'll have to buy them on Delta. It's more evil than Stalin and Hitler combined!
Google bought the company (one guy and his app). The value for them is in the technology, not the reMail brand. They'll include the parts they like with the gmail service. The guy who created the app got a nice chunk of change from the purchase and a job at a company many would be excited to work for. This is capitalism in it's most basic form. A guy created something of value and was rewarded for it. If this qualifies as evil, you are in the wrong country.
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*Shrug* (Score:2)
I mean, aren't there other email options available to iPhone users (I'm honestly asking - I don't use an iPhone). And if there are other options, it's not like the GMail app offered much other than a better search - on the phone. Surely, someone will offer decent search for any iPhone email out there at some point, no?
This has been said many times before: if you don't like a businesses practices, don't use them. Something else will ALWAYS spring up to meet demand.
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Well, the iPhone already has an IMAP application called 'Mail' and since they added Spotlight search on the iPhone, full-text inbox searches are also/still possible.
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Yep, DeepFish from the makers of PocketInformant: http://www.webis.net/products_info.php?p_id=deepfish [webis.net]
No connection to the company, other than being a rabid supporter of PI...
I use iGmail for full body searches (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I use iGmail for full body searches (Score:5, Funny)
Full body searches is something that is very important for an email app.
I don't know why you like full body searches so much, but I consider them invasive and uncomfortable. But I guess if you like that sort of thing....
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I use the mobile gmail web interface in safari, as I find it much more useful than the Apple's minimally-featured mail app. Searching may not be instantaneous, but it's fast enough, and I don't need to waste precious iPhone storage.
Sure, you need an internet connection, but that's basically true of Apple's app, too.
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Why don't you get a different phone, one that actually has a decent mail client?
Sounds like a great time to build an app (Score:2)
Hey, maybe I found the missing step 2:
1. Build email searching app
2. *** GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE *** (darn, we have to buy ANOTHER one of these?)
3. Profit!
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Producing an email application good enough that Google is interested in buying it for incorporation into some future scheme is a challenge. Producing unpolished(or even quite competent) "me too" clones of applications that Google has purchased in the past is fairly easy and the barriers to entry aren't all that high. If it became generally known that Google would buy anything, th
Ceased "not being evil" (Score:2, Interesting)
Now they are just the new microsoft or another corporate giant
they almost stop coding.... they just buy!
Remember google wave? blehg... google buzz? bleh...
Even Google Chrome is not what people imagined it would be..
Next big thing google will do (if they finally manage to pay enough) is buying facebook or tw
That's how to keep shareholders happy (Score:2)
I don't know how much coding Google still does or doesn't do these days, but...
Shareholders want to see short term profits, and buying other companies is the way to achieve that. And you'll see this very same behavior from every publicly traded company that has cash available for other purchases.
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It's more like they are redefining evil to suit their needs.
"Provide no privacy" should be more fitting, what with the Buzz cock-up and all.
Profit (Score:5, Informative)
20 COMPETE WITH GOOGLE
30 GET BOUGHT BY GOOGLE
40 GOTO 10
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Anywhere.
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He's an Apple II Plus BASIC coder you insensitive clod!
And I'd hire him here at Legacy Old Fart Software!
GOTO is evil (Score:4, Funny)
GOTO is evil
Kill, or offer it up for free? (Score:2)
Is the headline misleading?
Has Google ever once just bought a competing product to shut it down?
I suspect they will roll this into Gmail service, the the free Google iPhone app.
Imperial march (Score:2, Funny)
DUM dum DUM dum DA-DUM dum DA-DUM!
DIM dim DIM dim DI-DUM dum DA-Daaaam!
Him hum ha-him hum, ha-hum-ha hum --
ha-him hum, ha-hum-ha hum...
And so began the Imperial March of Google...
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Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
They have effectively employed a Developer (or more than one if the company wasn't a one man band) for work on their mail related projects taking his existing work on a (popular?) mail related application as part of his CV. They were perhaps on the lookout for a developer with good experience in both mail protocols and UIs for mobile devices (I can see that skillset fitting in to their plans as I understand them). Said developer/company does not have time to maintain/support the iPhone app long term on top of new responsabilities in the new position with Google so decided to stop, and Google has not particular interest in keeping it going by passing it to another team either because the market for it is too small for them to care or it just isn't the direction they want to send a dev team in at the moment.
There doesn't need to be any anti-Apple consideration here at all. Apple users need not worry: if there is a good market for such an application someone will step up to the bat and create one. In fact I predict many will turn up soon as people try follow in this fellow's footsteps - you just need to hope one of the new projects will be both good and long lived...
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
it's for the people (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies like Google buy small companies mainly for the people. Think of it as a big hiring bonus.
I suspect other than that, reMail simply didn't figure in any of their business plans.
It's happened before... it'll happen again (Score:5, Informative)
There's no reason to think that Google isn't doing the same thing.
Effort to protect an illegal monopoly (Score:3, Interesting)
reMail provided a capability similar to Gmail's search that worked with IMAP accounts and mail providers other than Gmail
Since part of Gmail's competitive edge is good search technology, reMail was a substantial competitive threat.
Now by buying and killing them, their search capability is no longer available on the mobile platform. iPhone users will have to use gmail and Google's built-in search instead of a third-party IMAP provider in order to get a decent search experience.
Killing this competitor protects Google's monopoly on search, and on e-mail search in particular.
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Effort to protect an illegal(1) monopoly
(1) Citation Needed
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All you need to have is a few deep-pocket competitors lobby the government and you will become an illegal monopoly. That's why Ticketmaster isn't an illegal monopoly - no deep-pocket competitors.
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Effort to protect an illegal(1) monopoly
(1) Citation Needed
Sherman Antitrust Act [wikipedia.org], Section 1.
Troll (Score:2)
Does reMail have say some sort of patent.
No doubt this is for the future.
I say it is either to:
A) Develop their own "App" to access Gmail over Android (or whatever Google phones are called then) and they want to use a technology or expertise developed by reMail
or
B) reMail has a patent, or Google will file for a patent using reMail technology, that will enable them to boot/restrict/make pay licence fees to Google any phone company that wishes to access Gmail.
How to Do No Evil (Score:2)
The Google EZ-Plan to Do No Evil.
1. Eliminate Evil Competition
2. Soak up customers
3. Be really nice to customers.
4. Keep being nice to customers.
5. After being well established as a monopoly, keep being nice to customers.
6. Rule world as benevolent ultraconglomerate.
7. Wait until after complete world domination to turn evil.
Spartacus (Score:2)
Perhaps Google is just planning to buy up all the iPhone developers, one at a time, until Android is the only game in town,
Woohoo, finally!!! "I'M SPARTACUS!!"
Redundant (Score:2)
Gmail already does lightning-fast full-text searches of your e-mail.
And it can download IMAP mail and import it into your Gmail account.
Hm... google have learnt from MS (Score:2)
Why bother with the embrace, extend part - costs time and money; go straight to extinguish and save money in the longer term.
Proprietary... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why many people don't like closed source proprietary software...
The original vendor of this software has stopped developing or distributing it, this would be bad enough and effectively turn existing versions into abandonware... But given Apple's distribution model, this software is now effectively completely defunct. What happens to all the people who paid for the non free version?
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This isn't evil.
Evil would be if the code was FOSS and someone else released a fork and Google threatened or sued them.
Evil would be if someone wrote a similar app and Google threatened or sued over copyright or general "IP".
Re:Don't be Evil? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, this is a good case for why a developer would FOSS an application in the first place. Of course, if you're in "Please Google buy me out and make me rich beyond avarice" mode, then you wouldn't.
How about creating a semi FOSS license that remains closed source, and immediately becomes FOSS or Public Domain should the company ever fold, or the software itself becomes otherwise unavailable.
Kind of a poison pill of everlasting life. It would prevent applications from ever disappearing except by natural death (nobody wants it any longer).
Nail, meet head (Score:2)
Actually, this is a good case for why a developer would FOSS an application in the first place. Of course, if you're in "Please Google buy me out and make me rich beyond avarice" mode, then you wouldn't.
How about creating a semi FOSS license that remains closed source, and immediately becomes FOSS or Public Domain should the company ever fold, or the software itself becomes otherwise unavailable.
Kind of a poison pill of everlasting life. It would prevent applications from ever disappearing except by natural death (nobody wants it any longer).
It takes two to tango; there is no doubt that the project author made the conscious decision to join Google knowing that he would forfeit control of the project. Google probably even said point blank "we want to put your expertise to work *for Google*" with the implication that otherwise, he was only really benefiting Apple.
Who here really thought Google would buy an iStore App company (the developer) with the intention of profiting from the App's sales? Anyone? Buying it to 'absorb' the IP (i.e. kill i
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They didn't have to kill it.
And I'd like to add another thought. That is that if you buy software, there is no implied contract that the company you're buying from will exist in three months, leaving you holding software that may or may not be functional in a very short order.
I've seen this happen with all sorts of nifty utilities that go the way of the Dodo bird, simply because the company disappears.
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They didn't have to kill it.
That's like saying a lion that comes across a wounded gazelle in the jungle "doesn't have to kill it". Sure, it doesn't *have* to but you know damn well that it will, without blinking. Google has no reason to buy an App store developer and pay him to keep developing App store apps, plain and simple. Do you think they were looking to make an investment?
Back to the law of the jungle; Google merely did what anyone would do when faced with a conflict: throw money at it. This app was developed buy a guy so h
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Yeah, because a hungry lion is exactly the same as Google. And successful software developers are exactly like a wounded gazelle. And non-rational animals are exactly like rational (debatable I know) people running corporations.
Where's Analogy Guy when you need him?
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This is a good argument for why things like periodic software licenses should be outlawed - you should be able to continue to use an otherwise perfectly functional piece of software even if the company that supports it is no longer in existence - or even more li
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How about creating a semi FOSS license that remains closed source, and immediately becomes FOSS or Public Domain should the company ever fold, or the software itself becomes otherwise unavailable.
Of course, the problem with that is that you have to make the source available ahead of time. Part of the reason that FOSS licenses aren't revokable is that, once you've released a copy under the license, anyone with that copy retains the license under which it was released.
I kind of like the idea that, in order to get formal copyright protection, developers must register the source code with some government agency. Then the source would be released to the public domain if the copyright expires, and furt
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"Of course, if you're in "Please Google buy me out and make me rich beyond avarice" mode, then you wouldn't."
I recommend that every professional developer get into that mode if they're lucky enough to have the opportunity. As in professional sports, most of us won't get to play much once we reach our forties so you need to save the money for the lean years. Being an F/OSS hero won't pay the bills.
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Actually, this is a good case for why a developer would FOSS an application in the first place.
hmmm, how? This particular developer was looking for making money right from the beginning (his app had a paid version too) and I can argue that but not making it FOSS, he made it possible for Google to buy it (money!) and hire him (money! money!). How would he make comparable profit buy making the project FOSS?
Re:Don't be Evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
> So much for _that_ motto... as if they lived by it
> in the first place.
You'll need to explain why playing hardball with Apple counts, in some way, as "evil". The developer got a nice permanent job and a pile of cash, existing users still get to use the app they bought. Potential users are out of luck, but I don't see how Google owes them anything...
c.
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You'll need to explain why playing hardball with Apple counts, in some way, as "evil".
it's not evil for apple, it's not evil for the developer, but it _is_ evil for any gmail user with iphone/itouch
You have it all wrong (Score:2)
This is a common mistake ... Google's slogan isn't actually "Don't Be Evil"; it's actually "Don't Be Apple."
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Evil? Or just smart?
What does it matter to you?
When you've got a job to do
You've got to do it well;
You gotta give the other fellow hell!
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Re:Microgoogle? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They wouldn't have killed it to bring users over, they would of killed it so iPhone users just couldn't use it.
Things go better with Coke and without evil (Score:2)
The only reason we know about "Don't be evil" is because Google told us. Thus it's just marketing plain and simple.