Re:A dose of reality (Score 1)

That might be part of the appeal but it is far from all or most of it. From what I see, the sort of developer that Google courts is likely to go where a) the big money is b) the "next big thing" is. They want to be part of history and be well rewarded for it.

Case in point? Observe the number of Google defections to Facebook when Facebook announced it was providing a (proprietary) API to its (proprietary) social graph and attracted investment by none other than Microsoft itself.