[drupal-devel] some drupal stats

[Chris Messina]

On Mar 31, 2005 1:54 PM, K B <kbahey at gmail.com> wrote:

> On the other hand, look at this from another angle: Google sees Drupal
> as important. I have no idea if they made that offer to other blogging
> software as well or not, but that makes me feel good to be part of the
> Drupal community.

WordPress got the same offer. So google is going around to all the
CMS' and asking them to bundle AdSense with their tarballs. Makes
sense, doesn't it?

I see a couple issues though.

First, the money needs to be funneled to the Drupal Foundation --
which, to my knowledge, doesn't exist yet.

Second, we should never sign an exclusive agreement with them or
anyone else. Instead, we should be able to bundle a Y! Overture module
alongside AdSense and let people choose to participate.

Third, we should be careful about jumping into something that might be
hard to get out of at a later date. For example, if Google does become
evil, how do we remove their module from our distro? Are we bound by
some kind of agreement? And how will Google be tracking the number of
users that they're going to pay us for? Are there any privacy
concerns?

I know that this could help Drupal move along, but we also have some
leverage. I mean, if we started the Support OpenSource Advertising
syndicate or something, maybe we could bundle our own ads and make
more money directly. OTOH, Google already has good technology to do
this for us.

I dunno, Drupal isn't special in being marketed to by Google. This
AdSense deal could be a boon for Drupal or it might not be. I think
Dries will make the right decision on this, but I thought I'd point
out a couple other thoughts on the matter.

Chris