Google Open Source

Information Week reports Like its fellow E-commerce leviathans Amazon.com and eBay, Google is facing a reality of the Internet business: It needs to court independent software programmers as well as customers. Google today launched code.google.com, a site for programmers interested in writing applications that work in coordination with Google's search site.

It initially includes four projects that Google developers have worked on and are releasing as open-source code through SourceForge, as well as application programming interfaces that are used to let other software interact with Google.

Companies like Google, Amazon, and eBay are increasingly courting outside programmers to create tools that interact with their Web sites, hoping to become online hubs of commerce with themselves as the technology platform in the middle of it. "One thing we really wanted to put up on Google Code was a way of bringing recognition to those people and groups who have created programs that use our APIs or the code we have released," writes Chris DiBona, open source program manager, on the Google Code page.

eWeek revealed Ask Jeeves is considering open source, and Yahoo is doing it too.

There is also a Blogger Development Network

Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at how Google operates, and click here for a summary of what is new in the world of search engines.