This is a great statement about strategy, the power of internet, and open source activities.  It is thought provoking, and I believe there are lessons for banks in product development, and in online banking development.

O’Reilly Radar > A Week in the Valley: GData

we just want so many developers using straightforward HTTP and XML that it’s impossible for someone to introduce anything proprietary that would weaken Google

Here is the entire paragraph.  This approach is replicable to any business including banks.  Elsewhere in the post, Nat compares to Microsoft, who would build something purportedly open, but would still patent API’s within it.

That’s the strategy if you want to make money off the use of the APIs and you want to own the services. Google doesn’t look at in the same way. I pushed Chris DiBona on Google’s take on APIs and he said, “we just want so many developers using straightforward HTTP and XML that it’s impossible for someone to introduce anything proprietary that would weaken Google“. Google doesn’t need the proprietary ownership of the services, they make their money when people use the Internet.

The biggest threat to Google isn’t that someone else will implement the same Calendar API as Google, it’s that someone will make web pages uncrawlable through proprietary extensions to HTML or HTTP. They need web standards so firmly entrenched in common use that nobody can break the Internet from under them, and this pits them against proprietary evilness.

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