Google vs. Microsoft on Open Source

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Google's Vic Gundotra, vice president of Engineering for Developer Products, declares:

"After years of competition among platforms, the web has won because it's open, because it's ubiquitous, and because there's a passionate community working together to move it forward. Openness is great for developers and for users because it knocks down hurdles to building great applications, and because it speeds the next wave of innovation by letting good ideas be shared. The web doesn't depend on any one API or tool or product, from Google or anyone else. What makes the real difference is the aggregate effect of us all working together, with open standards and open source.

Can you imagine Microsoft making that sort of a statement? Never. And that is why it fails on the web.

In sum, Microsoft still doesn't understand the Internet, the ultimate child of the open-source movement. It is the Internet that simultaneously makes Google and open source so brilliantly destructive and disruptive to Microsoft's future.

Ray Ozzie is right to be afraid.