Google+ API’s 6 Month Roadblock

It has now been six months since the “first step” Google+ API was released; and unfortunately, it remains a read only tool. Six months! That’s an incredibly long time for a company trying to innovate and play catch-up with a competitor that is so far in front. If Google wants continued loyalty from the grass roots developer community, they need to enable this basic aspect of interoperability — writing into the Google+ ecosystem from outside applications and websites is critical to its evolution.

For the legal community, this means lawyers and firms will continue to spend time manually sharing content. Considering the limited time we all have to invest in any one social network, Google certainly isn’t making it easy. It could also be argued that focusing people’s time and energy on the mundane efforts of manual publishing is taking away from online conversation.

The lack of write access within the Google+ API is stifling the network’s engagement, in my view. And worse, I can’t help but think Google is doing this intentionally — forcing users to write substantive material inside of Google properties, forsaking control over their own content, and further destroying the public web.

Google’s always said it supports the open web. It’s time they backed up their words; starting with their social network’s API.

Comments

  1. Well said. I am not prepared to duplicate my content sharing efforts. That duplication should be automatic if I want it to be.
    Google’s name alone has not convinced me of the service’s usefulness.