...grown to become open sources biggest foe while at the same time being one of open sources biggest friends.  Confused? You should be.

Google helps the open source movement through its contributions to various open source projects, funding of open source summer development projects, open source conference sponsorships and simply by being a poster child for its internal use of open source.  Google also open sources elements of its product portfolio in an attempt to gain market acceptance for a given product.  Google Android, Google Chrome and later this year I should say, Google Chrome OS are examples of open sourcing to help drive adoption.  For these reasons, its easy to argue that Google is an open source friend.

But, its becoming increasingly clear that Google deserves the foe badge when we consider open source vendors and organizations that are at the forefront of the open source movement. The Google Chrome OS, while based on Linux, is directly competitive with offerings from Red Hat and Canonical and other Linux vendors targeting consumers.  Google Chrome is competitive with Firefox, Google Docs is competitive to OpenOffice.org and Google Apps is competitive with Zimbra.  This list is certain to grow down into the middleware stack, i.e. Google App Engine of the future, and up into the consumer applications stack with Googles ambitions.

Dont get me wrong, competition is great for users as it forces all vendors to raise their game.  However, we should not ignore the fact that Google has deftly become the largest threat to open source vendors, the same vendors who are driving open source adoption today.

When I woke to read an email about Google Chrome OS from an MBA friend, Asif, a light bulb went off about Googles foe status.  Asif has forgotten more about world history and politics than Ill ever learn, but he would never be accused of being a computer geek.  And yet, here he was sending me a link to the Financial Times story about Chrome OS.  He had never mentioned Ubuntu, Red Hat or any other open source entity to me in the past two years Ive known him.  If regular consumers like Asif, who generally have a strong view of the Google brand, get behind Chrome OS, then the likes of Ubuntu and other Linux distros are in for a world of hurt; at least from a consumer angle.  But it wont stop there.  As Google expands further into middleware and consumer applications, open source vendors that compete in these areas will have to compete against Google.  Its one thing for an open source upstart to throw stones at Microsoft, Oracle, IBM or SAP and position themselves as being unlike those vendors.  But this strategy wont work when competing against Google, a known friend of open source, and especially when Google has open sourced the competing product in question.  The its closed source argument wont hold much weight.

Nobody ever accused MySQL of being an open source foe because it competes with PostgreSQL, so why is Google a foe just for competing with open source vendors? No open source vendor, by itself or in some informal collaboration, has the brand, reach, ability to execute, resources or level of customer preference that Google does.  The competition will be nowhere close to fair.  If Google wins against these individual open source vendors, the resulting Google stack will be much homogeneous than were accustomed to.  The choice that open source drives will be severely limited.  Open source will win and lose at the same time.

Note to self; dont be surprised to receive an email from Asif in 5 years titled: Its a Google world; youre just living in it. Enjoy.

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