Right now, Facebook is probably the most successful and biggest hyped thing on the Internet. Most of it is for good reason, because many people, especially college students, have almost exclusively adopted it as their replacement to e-mail and Instant Messenger. With the release of powerful APIs to hook deeply into Facebook's site, some powerful applications (but mostly really annoying ones) have been created that leverage the social network of Facebook and integrate so well you don't even realize it's a program built on top of Facebook. It's amazing how successful this has been with consumers. But, of course, now that Facebook has aligned with Microsoft, it's time for Google to take a swing.

Google does not want all the social networking to go to Facebook (and therefore the ad dollars to Microsoft), so they released an API package they call OpenSocial. It basically seems that you'll now be able to create Google Widgets that interact with data from social networks. Signed on are currently MySpace, Friendster, Six Apart, and Salesforce.com, among many others. The openness of the system sounds intriguing, but we have yet to see how the API matures and what aspiring developers can do.

I think that, of course, it's great to have an open platform. Plus, as TWiT said on this week's podcast, these social application developers don't have to be locked into Facebook's system exclusively or be worried about Facebook taking away their business with a new feature. Plus, Facebook is a very closed system, and the ability to put some of this content on your blog as well as behind the curtain of the Facebook login will be a boon for plugin developers. In the end, a viable competitor in any market is good, and I'm glad that Facebook may finally be getting a handful of viable competitors all supported by Google.

UPDATE: In other Google news, this morning they announced the Open Handset Alliance which is developing a free, Open Source phone operating system. Between Google and Apple, I'm actually getting excited about owning a cell phone, especially a Google OS based on Linux.