George Santayana and Google

One of the few benefits of being 48 in this game is having some sense of the history of this whole high-tech thing. Google, the latest and greatest hope of a countervailing force to Microsoft launched the ultra-cool Google Desktop 2 Beta a few days ago.

Pity that IPO didn’t cover the cost of a high tech historian, someone whose been there and done that when it comes to evangelizing developers trying to learn a new non-Microsoft API.

If it had, perhaps Google Desktop Developer Group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop-Developer would not be starved for Google tech support. Developer after developer there are begging for some “Google Employee” mojo so that they can learn how to build cool stuff using Google’s desktop API.

Ten years ago nearly to the day, another company challenged Microsoft, had an API and make the catastrophic mistake of starving it for technical resources. There’s a fascinating post to a thread I started there by one of the people who was involved.

The company? Netscape, of course. And we all know how that story turned out.

Don’t get me wrong – I think Google is cool, the Google Desktop is cool and I’m all for Google. Except ignorance of history, like ignorance of the law, is no excuse.

 Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. – George Santayana.

Comments

[Ged Byrne]

Somebody has already posted a compiled TLB file for delphi users:

http://delphi-google-desktop.iprx.com/archives/archive_2005-w35.php#e4

[Ged Byrne]

Bob,

It looks like all a Desktop Display plugin has to do is implement the type library described in the following IDL:
http://desktop.google.com/GoogleDesktopDisplayAPI.idl

The following tutorial shows how to compile an IDL for use in VB6 using the MIDL compiler:
http://www.devx.com/vb2themax/Article/19830/1763/page/1

[Bob Walsh]

Thanks Clay for the book suggestion - its now on my list to buy!

[Bob Walsh]

Nope, that's me, 2 years ago.

[Ged Byrne]

Google understand that any developers will always choose a T-Shirt over some decent resources.

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't sending people over to the group.

Getting Help
Check out our Google Desktop API discussion group to see if anyone has had the same problem you're wrestling with. The Google Desktop team occasionally monitors the group and answers questions.
http://desktop.google.com/developer.html

[J]

Bob, a bit off-topic, but you certainly don't look 48 at the pic on the right. Is it recent? :)

[Clay]

Bob,

Speaking of Netscape circa 1995, have you read:

High Stakes, No prisoners?
It's about the creator of Front Page. Interesting read. Touches a lot on the issues with Netscape mistreating it's dev community.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812931432/qid=1125375839/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-0876156-1168922?v=glance&s=books&n=507846