Delicious News, Not
It was not news. It was rumor.
Two days ago, I caught news of Yahoo announcing that the Delicious social bookmarking service is on a "sunset policy" and will be shut down. This was heavily circulated in the news and tweeted about in Twitter. Earlier this month, I began my Delicious experience and since then I have established a couple of months worth of bookmarks in Delicious. I was very upset by the announcement because I have a reliance on Delicious links and an RSS feed of those links through the icons illustrated below.
I immediately began looking for a replacement service. I did not want to go with the smaller players because they are subject to the same peril as Delicious which used to be supported by Yahoo. When I discovered that the Google Bookmarks service exists, I went in that direction. As it turns out, the Google Bookmarks service only supports private bookmarks whereas Delicious supports both private and public bookmarks. Because I use Delicious for its public bookmarking support, Google Bookmarks was not a replacement candidate.
There are various smaller players offering social bookmarking services with some charging for the service. I prefer a free service (as I am getting now with Delicious) and from a bigger player (if I am going to invest putting my bookmarks into another service, I want longevity).
Yesterday, news and Twitter tweets revealed that Yahoo has clarified their position with Delicious. True, Delicious is no longer a strategic fit at Yahoo and the service is on a "sunset policy" but Yahoo is re-assuring users to remain with Delicious as Yahoo is seeking a buyer to sustain the Delicious service.
As I discussed this Delicious plight with others, a couple of ideas surfaced:
- Google could buy Delicious
- Delicious could go open source
As a user wishing for Delicious to be backed and supported by a major player, Google buying Delicious is my preference. As a service, I want good performance and the Google server infrastructure is second to none. My main concern for Delicious going open source is twofold:
- I have seen open source projects go terribly wrong (granted Linux has been a great success on the server side).
- Server infrastructure is needed to provide Delicious as a service scaleable to the masses. Open source does not address that requirement.
Since Google has such massive purchasing power and they are in a buying mood, they should shore up their social networking portfolio in addition to releasing their Facebook-Killer - a "social layer" encompassing all Google products. See the following two pages for related mention of Google's competitive landscape:
The only thing that could stop Google from becoming the ultimate one-stop brand of all time is anti-trust laws. I have mixed feelings with anti-trust pressure on technology companies. I tend to side with the companies. In general, anti-trust lawsuits do nothing more than stifle innovation and advancement for the betterment of users. For the user, what did the anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft achieve? There is no desktop O/S alternative. Microsoft's Internet Explorer would have been supplanted by superior browsers anyway. It did not require un-bundling from the Operating System for the truth to be known; better information and education to users/customers is all that is needed. If anti-trust goes after Google, it can only weaken Google whereas I want superior services to prevail.
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