The Jason Salas Experience

I'm updating a post I did on my previous blog months ago in which I wondered out loud whether Google would ever get into the developer tools market.

I'm now wondering what the world would be like if Google got into building, marketing and releasing developer tools. They've already made great strides with the public APIs for its search and mapping services, taking a very Web 2.0 approach to connecting with their targeted audiences. So one can expect them to have at least considered becoming very active and eventually dominant in the external programing space and fostering relationships with ISVs.

What if the company started producing its own new programming languages, IDE(s), utilities and more to make building custom Internet-aware applications using their technologies? Now we're talking head-to-head competition with Microsoft on an entirely different level. I think it's a very natural and expected progression as a software giant, and I'm quite sure more than a few of the smart people there have tossed this around at some point.

I'm sure this has come up internally. After thinking this over, and having considered that Google does run its own custom Linux flavor, plus the fact that other dev shops like Disney have developed their own proprietary scripting languages, and coupled with the apparent recent hiring of Python creator Guido van Rossum, would it really make sense for Google to give people a means of writing their own programs? I'm guessing now that maybe a graphical way for non-programers to access their growing list of APIs and programmatic services, like Google Local maps, would be better. A limited IDE, so to speak, centric only to Google's products and services.

Google's heavy into the LAMP stack, and as far as I know, doesn't use custom programming languages. I've read on their jobs page they prefer Python and C++ backgrounds, so I don't know about this anymore. Maybe it's best to really maximize development, without getting into the core fundamentals of frameworks and languages.

Anyone have an opinion on whether this would make sense?