Daring Fireball: Google's Open Web
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
"The assumption here is that the only way to search is through Google, and that the ”open Internet” is only what Google can index and sell ads against."
That's it...that's the entirety of the original content of his post. Whoopty Fuckin' Doo
Maybe he's right, but is indexing and a common access mechanism really such a bad description of open? Sure they want to sell ads against it, but they can still do that even if they just aggregate content from 1000 different access mechanisms.
They've tried to crawl Flash sites before, but those are still distributed through a browser, contrast that with an app that has a (sometimes limited) JSON api but requires a specific platform just to access the interface. If they don't "crawl" the actual interface while it's running, they can't see anything.
That's a dead end though if the person searching has to install an app built for a device they dont have just to follow a search link.
Maybe the real answer is that not everything should be crawl-able in the first place? Or not everything needs to be instantly searchable?