Amazon Web Services and Google are taking dramatically different paths to promote community development and protect the privacy of customers who use their services. The question is, what’s driving the tech giants?
Last week, Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon, joined the governing body of the .NET Foundation,Opens a new window an advisory group that guides software developmentOpens a new window for users of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. AWS now will be in a better position to assist developers who use Windows in its market-leading cloud.
Meanwhile, Google is balking at privacy moves proposed by the .Net Foundation, which also governs Internet standards, to limit the use of cookiesOpens a new window . Google uses cookies to collect data on users of its Chrome Internet browser. Google, also a member of the .NET Foundation, sells the data to advertisers who target people browsing the web.
Customer is king
According to an Amazon blog postOpens a new window , AWS is joining the Microsoft-created foundation to work for open-source development as a service to its customers — even as AWS competes with Microsoft’s Azure Cloud.
As a foundation member, AWS can help shape the direction of the .NET platform, which lets communities of open source developers contribute code for mobile, embedded devices as well as web-browser plug-ins and APIs, which basically specify how software components interact. AWS has offered customers a software development kit for .NET since 2009.
The move comes as many corporations are adopting hybrid cloud infrastructure and on-premise data centers for computing and storage. An active role in the foundation means that AWS can save steps when it creates interfacesOpens a new window for its Linux-based cloud used by customers’ Windows-based systems.
Limits on privacy
Like AWS, Google also occupies a position on the foundation’s advisory body. And, like Microsoft, it has opened some of its intellectual propertyOpens a new window for public development, namely the Kubernetes containers that let users plug into hybrid infrastructures in secure environments.
But efforts by the Worldwide Web Consortium to boost privacy protections appear a bridge too far. In an August poll, Google stood out among members of the .Net Foundation when it objected to an expanded role for the Privacy Interest Group, which works on platform specifications.
According to Google, giving the privacy group veto power over projects deemed to threaten privacy would add a layer of bureaucracy to the standards-setting process and delay platform development. Instead, Google’s executives advocated the drafting of voluntary core principles to guide developers when creating APIs.
Unlike Google’s Chrome browser, Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s open-source Firefox browsers block third-party tracking cookies. And Google’s counter-proposal stands in direct opposition to the wishes of most Internet users.
Revenues dictate policy
However, because the Worldwide Web Consortium operates on a consensus basis, Google’s objection is so far carrying the day. If a resolution can’t be reached in current negotiations, the decision will fall to the panel’s chairman, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist credited with creating the World Wide Web.
In the meantime, Google says it will continue to press its vision of online privacy. It includes letting users amass cryptographic tokens as measures of trust and storing personal information on devices that run its Android operating system rather than in web browsers.
And that means things probably won’t change significantly, including for users of cloud platformsOpens a new window like AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Google’s Cloud trails both in market share, and the company’s moves to dictate online privacy will ensure that it continues to earn the money needed to keep up with its rivals.