Abhijit Speaks :

It seems now that Google is doing the chasing up game for a change, with their new ‘initiative’ called ‘OpenSocial API’ to take on Facebook and I think MySpace too. I tried to take a peek at that, it was just a very very very quick peek. My usual way of learning something is first see a few sample Apps, download them, use them and see if there is anything interesting I can try out. First roadblock “broken link”. Now I am not sure whether it is just happening with me or happens with everyone? I am trying to download some sample Apps to my orkut profile. To do so, I am following instructions on this link. So I decide to go to sandbox.orkut.com. Unfortunately the link goes to ‘normal Orkut home page’. I just checked the date to make sure it’s not 1st April. ‘Cos google has this habit of playing pranks, may be this was a prank. But there’s another URL called Orkut Application Directory . Dutifully, I click the link, Ouch Google again November fooled me! No list of applications. So while Ning and Hi5 and a bunch of other sites are able to host OpenSocial applications (as said on the blog), it seems Google is not able to do so in their own Social Network Orkut? Or am I lost here?

Anybody, why is Google releasing something which is so half cooked? Or is it just that the “Facebook” scare has really caught up at Googleplex? Was it not easier to throw a few billions and buy some stake in Facebook?