ParisLemon

At first, Danny Sullivan’s post made it seem as if Google was killing off OpenSocial, the initiative launched several years ago in the face of Facebook’s Platform/Graph. But Google clearly didn’t like that too much, so they clarified with Sullivan that only the Social Graph API was closing.

Sullivan then questioned if there was really any difference? There is — but this is humorous for a couple reasons:

1) Why is Google going out of its way to ensure people that OpenSocial is still, in fact, alive when they clearly don’t give a shit about it anymore with the rise of Google+?

2) Has anyone truly, honestly, seen any trace of OpenSocial anywhere on the web in months? Years? I’m sure some sites are still utilizing it, but I don’t think it’s unreasonably snarky to suggest that more sites may have forgotten they have it implemented in some form than actually use it actively. 

I suspect the only reason Google isn’t “sunsetting” it along with the Social Graph API and many other products is because it was never set up to be a Google-led project, but rather yet another open thing. Google would take a lot of shit for killing something that was meant to be “open”. Hence the corrections to Sullivan.

But honestly, it doesn’t matter what Google says here. OpenSocial may not be dead as in killed, but it is dead as in buried.