I ran across this blog by Ed Burnette today:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/its-the-platform-stupid-says-google-engineer/2382?tag=mantle_skin;content

He’s talking about a tirade by Steve Yegee of Google (click here to read it).  Warning: It’s long, so get comfortable.  On the other hand, it’s also right!  As Ed says in his blog above, people are missing the point about Steve’s rant.  He’s not bashing Google+ or really any Google product, he’s talking about a way of looking at things.  I’d think the higher ups at Google should want to take him out to dinner and buy him a new car, and start pushing people to move in the Platform direction.  It is a very different way of doing things than writing discrete applications that don’t talk to anyone else, and it’s harder, but to take Steve’s point, SO worthwhile in the long run.  It empowers other developers (maybe not even at your company) to take work you have done and use it as a building block to create something way cooler that you probably never even thought of.

This was written as an internal rant for Google folks, but it’s easily Accessible to other folks too.  Anybody doing software development would be well served to give this some serious thoughts.  Thanks, Steve – it IS about the platform.