» Google’s new mantra: Making the Web a better platform for all | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

» Google’s new mantra: Making the Web a better platform for all | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com:

"“In the next year we will make a series of announcements and spend hundreds of millions on innovations and giving them away as open source,” said Vic Gundotra, the new head of Google’s developer programs. Google believes that innovation on the Web has been lacking. XML and HTTP Request were innovative technologies in 1998, but it took until April 2004 for an application, Gmail, to really take advantage of them, Gundotra said.

The initiative to gift Google’s technology to the Web community at large comes from co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. “Google was born on the Web. Larry and Sergey and the rest of Google built Google on the Web and with open source. They want to give back,” Gundotra said.

The idea is that by making the Web a better platform, through open sourcing core software technology, innovation will accelerate and improve the overall Web experience for all. But the Googlers are not being purely altruistic.

“It also makes good economic sense. The more applications, the more usage. More users means more searches,” Gundotra said. And, more searches means more revenue for Google. The goal is to grow the overall market, not just to increase market share."