Not a big deal to me. If done right, we'll all get better ads and privacy won't be compromised. I know my opinion on this is unpopular, but I think privacy is a cultural issue holding back progress in a huge way.
I think this is a bunch of BS. Google didn't have to create a platform, it took control of the world's biggest platform. Google benefits from most things built on the web sans Facebook. Now it's leading the way in the most promising platform of the next few years with Android. Chrome is a platform. Google+ is a platform for content creation that solves the problem of the Facebook crawl wall. It also sets the stage for a more complete solution to your problems (aka searches) via increasing its knowledge on individuals.
I don't think Google will accomplish its goal with plus however, because it's not being aggressive enough in collecting user data and integrating it with search. I think the Universities are in the best position to do this as they did with email and the web. The killer app will be a light bulb that makes extremely useful suggestions based on context.
Even physical micro-hubs like coworking spaces where I live in Phoenix do not capture the serendipity of interaction that Silicon Valley provides.
Here you have to consciously decide to go where other startups are at. In Silicon Valley I just get a cup of coffee and there's a conversation at the table next to me about startups.
Although, I have to say Twitter enabled more fluid communication in the startup scene here. Enough to where I have been able to spot a couple people not at the typical hotspots.
I hope their greed gets the best of them. Here's a poll I created to get general feedback on this subject. It's so infuriating to me, but a lot of people seem to be indifferent on the subject of patents: http://www.wepolls.com/p/3363896/
For that you'd have to have a standard API with indicators of content importance. Even then it would be akin to keyword meta tags which are bad representations of site content in general.
I think he has a great point that the value a person creates is not easily compensated in an information economy. Right now the information economy makes up less than 5% of the total in the U.S.
So advertising for the other sectors in the economy works well to support most of the information sector right now. What happens as those other sectors become more automated though? The smaller and smaller amount of people in charge of those sectors will become disproportionately compensated for the value they create. This is already happening in Wall Street for example. So we're going to need to find some way to compensate people for their digital contributions to things like open source, online communities like this, and other informational public goods or we'll be left relying on the government and/or super rich to distribute the abundance of wealth. Neither of which sound very appealing to me.
I've been developing for app engine since 2008 when it came out and absolutely love it. The price changes are a result of turning a successful and massively growing product into a profitable one a la search, youtube, etc... Google should be praised for this. The changes in price also accompany an SLA that guarantee developers will receive three years notice before a breaking API change or service shut down.
The SSL problem is a limitation in some browsers that causes the type of certificates that GAE needs to use a CNAME, not IP, based routing to display huge warnings.