Facebook does a Chrome

Is there something inherent in running large user bases that stops you thinking about users as individuals?

I'd hope not, but on the strength of recent events - Facebook most recently, Google Chrome a few months ago I'm not so sure.

In case you didn't notice at the time, Google published Chrome, thie new browser with a license agreement that gave them the right to reproduce anything that was created using their browser. That could potentially include a wide range of things from you email, to you images uploaded to Facebook(!?) to you bank details. Google quite rapidly responded that this of course was a mistake and that the license was just a stock item that should have been changed, which they duly did. The thing I did hear at the time was that they Google had previously tried to use the same agreement with their online word processor. The thing that I didn't hear was any reason why they would have such a clause in their license agreement.

To read of Facebook trying to take a similar approach, and doing so without consultation or warning gives great rise for concern and leads me (and a sizeable chunk of the blogsphere) to start asking some serious questions. The ones that spring immediately to my mind are:

1. How did an organisation that has at least some knowledge of managing large web based populations manage to decide that this change in terms and conditions was best managed by avoiding consultation and transparency?

2. Did they not expect a backlash when people found out?

3. Was this a way of measuring how big that backlash may be? (Hence the rapid u-turn)

4. I wonder how many people actually cancelled their Facebook accounts while the changed terms were in place and how the IP ownership of their photos and posts stands now?

I'm sure that the debate over this will rage for some time, but as many others have probably already done, I'd like to provide a little free consultancy on managing communities: be transparent and consultative in all elements that will directly effect the experience and rights of the community, and beyond that, let you community take a role in shaping you on-going service development. They'll feel positive about the shared ownership and development, and be more invested because of it.

Google ... where did all the innovation go?

Google has been hard at work in it's application developments recently. We had Google Health, then Lively and now Chrome. Google Earth was innovation, as was Google Health. My concern is that Lively, and now Chrome are Google essentially reiterating existing applications, with no obvious sign of the innovation or insight that I'd expect them to display.

Both Lively and Chrome add new applications into already heavily populated application genres. From a marketing perspective I'm struggling to see the real UPS, from a perspective of differentiation, producing applications into competitive genres - Virtual Worlds and Browsers both seeing a lot of growth over the last couple of years - effectively dilutes Google's presence, unless they can launch what becomes the leader in both of these genres. And that is no mean feat.

This is the thing that seems to be lacking from Google at the moment (and the thing that would make some sense of this sporadic application development) is a public statement of Google's view of th future of the Internet, it's service and application provision, and how that will fit into our personal and professional use of computers and the internet.

Then just as I finish writing this I see Dennis Howletts Post on the Google Chrome ELUA over at ZDNet and I can't believe that they actually think that this is acceptable behavior.

Oh, and at the point Chrome launched, Google's own plug-in for Lively didn't work. The there's the DoS vulnerability.

Google: time to sort it out and lead the future of the internet rather than seeming to treat your applications development with a lack-lustre attitude, and your end users with a significant amount of contempt.