The Mall Of Google

Open source is no longer a "don't ask, don't tell" secret in enterprise application development shops: Increased executive awareness and evolving open source business models are leading shops to adopt a mix of open source and commercial code. This shift fuels the long-term ambitions of an unlikely enterprise player — Google. It's easy to dismiss Google as an enterprise wannabe with a questionable commitment to enterprise computing, but look closer. The Internet's dominant search and advertising vendor's recent activities suggest to us that Google has expanded its target market to include enterprises. Google's model strongly leverages open source software but uses a new "mall" model that creates a destination where developers can find multiple projects built to exploit Web standards. The bottom line: Google has an application platform built for and of the Internet, and it is "good enough" for many apps that developers build today. Although Google has a lot to learn about serving enterprises, expect Java developers to gravitate toward Google's mall as a path to the cloud.