Jonathan Zittrain, professor at the OII, talks about this new movement towards closing platforms and against generativity. The iPhone platform is indeed revolutionary in many aspects, the problem is that it is just controlled by one company. It will generate new applications and functionalities, it will indeed be a great device, but always under the control and supervision of the Big Apple.

• Apple iPhone Developer Centre
• Download New SDK
• Apple Event Video

Following the trend at the OII, I feel like blogging about Facebook (see Jonathan Zittrain and Ian Brown‘s posts on it). My perspective is, however, a bit different. It is more related with the stickiness of this successful web app. It seems that in order to delete your account in Facebook you have to go through considerable pains according to a NYT article. Facebook archives the information you entered in the past, and even if you deactivate your account your data stays for a “reasonable amount of time” in the company’s servers.

Facebook’s terms of use state that “you may remove your user content from the site at any time,” but also that “you acknowledge that the company may retain archived copies of your user content.”

Its privacy policy says that after someone deactivates an account, “removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time.”

Apparently, the rationale of this policy is too gather as much demographic data possible for the use of advertisers, basically to “monetize the investment.” Sometime ago, I blogged about this kind of behaviour on Blog of Change’s post titled “Startup hubris and the commercialisation of the Internet.” Then I said that

[t]hese startups are managed by thoses kids that think and act with lots of self-confidence, to the point of hubris. For that’s the only way they can be heard and survive in this wild world of Internet business. Unfortunately, I reckon they control and manage the information given to them by the users/customers with the same hubris. They do think it is their information and they should use it for getting their businesses right. Indeed, they need to respect certain principles to get the confidence of the users/customers, but beyond that the information is theirs.

Facebook is certainly behaving this way…

Yes, it is big news. Yesterday, Microsoft offered $44.6 billion for Yahoo in its campaign to beat Google in the online hegemony battle. The offer is of $31 dollars per share, a premium of 62% over the price the day before – Yahoo shares jumped 48% after the news when the market open the next day! This offer follows a series of unsuccessful negotiations between Microsoft (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO) and Yahoo (Tony Semel, former Yahoo CEO) in 2006 and 2007.

This operation will, no doubt, call the attention of antitrust authorities, in the US and the EU, where regulations are even more stringent. It will be a long operation to close, if it ever does.

What worries me the most is the consequences for the users, for both companies have very different and particular cultures. Microsoft expects Yahoo will bring more innovation and another perspective to their online business – thus Yahooing Microsoft. My opinion is that Microsoft is too big and it has too strong a culture not too fall like an elephant on Yahoo’s heads. I am rather expecting a Microsofting of Yahoo, and that’s bad news for the user, it means less openness and more bureaucratic mindset. Yahoo is doing good things online e.g. Pipes, Microsoft will kill most of it I am afraid.