I think it's fine that Google spearheads this effort, but there's too much Googleness on all of it. Basing parts of it on their existing APIs doesn't seem like wise re-use, it just seems lazy, and a truly half-assed commitment to creating something really open. Google should have taken the path of being a totally neutral steward. Instead they erred on the side of making this an open version of The Orkurt Platform.
Are you referring to the "JavaScript API" or the "Data APIs?" Because the Data APIs are pretty plainly based on the Atom Publishing protocol, with only a few extensions. Yes, many of Google's APIs are now based on Atompub, but that isn't something that Google invented from whole cloth.
Perhaps learning from Facebook's mistakes... looks like the only thing open to non-partner developers so far is the Orkut sandbox, and even that requires approval. sigh...
"OpenSocial is built upon Google Gadget technology, so you can build a great, viral social app with little to no serving costs...."
That's great. I can do all the programming work, the users can do all the work of setting up their social network, and Google can keep all of our data for us. Gee. What a deal.
Google doesn't have to keep your data for you. The OpenSocial API is just a specification. Google's own applications implement the specification, and you can too. The API is designed to be able to work with data on any host. It's in the very nature of the addressability of the API's data. Look in the documentation, and you'll see lots of URIs that look like:
Notice that "domain" is a variable. In any case, why would you worry about Google being able to store data that is publicly accessible through a standardized API?
What's really nice about it is that it provides persistence capabilities as well. So you can utilize Google's server infrastructure to save your application data. I believe this makes it so much easier to scale.
I don't see anything obviously wrong with these APIs, but they don't live up to the hype about "opening social networks". OpenSocial does nothing to break down the identity silos and their network effects.
