Comments on: Social Networking: Is There a Market? Next Steps? Is it Meetro?

By: The Technology Suits » Google Entering The IM & VOIP Arena

The Technology Suits » Google Entering The IM & VOIP Arena — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:03:12 +0000

[...] The discussion of a Google IM began last year with an examination of Google’s early desktop search program that contained a protocol named ‘google_im://’. The buzz grew even louder in July of 2005 when Google made public steps into the IM market with the acquisition of Picasa. More recently, a rumor surfaced that Google was considering an acquisition of the location based instant messenger/consolidator Meetro, which has since turned out not to be true. [...]

By: The Technology Suits » Google Continues Move Into Mobile With Android Inc Purchase

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 18:28:41 +0000

[...] The acquisition of Android continues a line of recent purchases such as Dodgeball – a mobile social-networking application, Keyhole – map display technology. When added to this the recent rumored interest in Meetro – location based instant messenger and a Google nationwide Wi-Fi network, the possibilities for Google’s growth get quite interesting. [...]

By: Clay McCoy

Clay McCoy — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 20:02:29 +0000

Reading this article makes me realize what a primitive state consumer technology is still in. I’ve just read an article from the Joel on Software site talking about leaky abstractions (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html) and that is exactly what we have here. An abstraction is an simplified concept that wraps around how something really works and hides the details. Like when you drive your car, you have to know what all the controls do, but not how an engine works. An abstraction leaks when you have to understand what is going on behind the scenes. Like if your car runs out of gas, you have to know that the engine needs gas and what to do about it. Implementation details such as having a gps or wi-fi signal that can carry your signal are not things a consumer should have to deal with when this technology matures. People shouldn’t have to know where cell phone towers are either. These are implementation details, and consumers just want to use a service with a abstraction that makes sense to them.
The idea of meta data from the internet being mapped to objects in the real world is kind of frightening, and has much larger implications than finding out the hobbies of the person next to you on a train. This will be a fun one for someone to use for evil.