"I'm not sure who you think can compete with Google. For most people "the internet" is Google.com."
I thought the meme was that for most people facebook.com is the web?
All Google cares about is that whatever tech is out there doesn't prevent them from displaying Ads to as wide an audience as possible. This is a very different motive than what Microsoft has which is to control your entire PC experience.
Google has more or less been playing by the "open, free, web standards based" rules until it's browser got too big to fail.
Then started pushing out things like NaCl that aren't standard, and while open, very hard to implement in a way that stays compatible to Google (and arguably not something you want to implement if your focus is web standards of course).
To make sure of that, you buy how some game studios to release for that platform, and eventually only on that platform (See Bungie+MS, since you like these examples).
This is a lock-in, and that's the first extinguisher, and the worth part: it's only the tip of the iceberg we're starting to see.
Wanna wait til it gets bad for everyone just cause you like Google? Then you'll get in the "oh noes, Google deceived us" in 3-5 years?
Well, it'll be far too late. Better to voice things now (and it may already be too late).
For most people, the Internet is the site that gets them to things they want to see. This can be Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, or even Digg. It all depends on what they're comfortable using.
I thought the meme was that for most people facebook.com is the web?
All Google cares about is that whatever tech is out there doesn't prevent them from displaying Ads to as wide an audience as possible. This is a very different motive than what Microsoft has which is to control your entire PC experience.