Have you been seeing a lot of Google+ lately? I see it everywhere on the Internet, including places like GMail, Google Search and YouTube. And I think that Google has crossed the neutrality line.
Google+ in Gmail
You can also load hidden comments to the post –
Meaning that there is AJAX involved. The comments also get posted via AJAX, from within the email, so you don’t have to leave GMail.
All this functionality is cool, apart from one major flaw. Email clients including GMail don’t support JavaScript, apparently due to security issues. If that is the case, then why does Google+ get special treatment, Saying that they only trust themselves with JavaScript is exactly like Microsoft saying they only trust internet with IE. Verifying browsers for security is a lot easier than verifying a lot of emails. But they can at least allow other top social networks to use the feature. Top meaning every network, that is more frequented than Google+. Which includes
Google+ in search results
Hover over a result, to see the share link. Sharing links in search results are good, because they let you share content in your preferred network.
Which sadly is not the case here. This one only lets you share with your two friends on Google+.
It’s like Internet Explorer and Microsoft in the 1998 era. Google clearly has a monopoly of content distribution, as the two most visited search engines are both owned by Google ( Google search and YouTube ), and they are clearly misusing their position by allowing people to share easily to Google+, but not on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn. It can easily be argued that you can still take a link and manually share it on other networks, but you could also install Netscape manually, on your copy of Windows. The only problem was that IE did not go away. Neither does the Google+ share button.
What do you think? Has Google really crossed a line, or promoting their own product is fair game?
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