That's exactly the point, though- why should Google have to defend themselves so much more? Apple have the most tightly locked in messaging protocol, but no-one says a word about them opening it- even after they promised to.

Well, Apple gets incredible amounts of crap from HN and other places for their lack of openness. But at this point people just assume that Apple will not open up their stuff. And for the most part Apple doesn't make promises about that.

Google, on the other hand, got a free pass for a while because they had a lot of marketing to the effect of "Look at us! We're the openest openers who ever opened openness!" and... well, they have a history of spectacularly failing to follow through on that with, say, Android ("oh, it's totally open -- except for this release that only our partners get! And except for all the bits that most people don't realize are separate and that we'll C&D you for distributing! But it's OPEN, we promise!").

So people are starting to no longer give Google the automatic pass on this. Which should be expected.

I don't recall Apple ever promising that but if they did they wouldn't have explained why they can't or won't do it because they don't want to have it both ways. They are fine saying nope it's not open deal with it. Google seems to want it both ways which puts them under the microscope. Apple gets plenty of criticism from the same types of people for not being open. I don't buy into the poor lil' Google angle of this. They know exactly what they're doing.

"Upon the launch of the iPhone 4, Jobs promised that Apple would immediately start working with standards bodies to make the FaceTime protocol an "open standard." As of November 2012, it is not yet known to have been ratified by any standards body, and the extent of work by Apple with regard to this promise is unclear as Apple has not released technical specifications for the service. FaceTime is not currently supported on any non-Apple devices."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaceTime

I read somewhere that the Facetime team heard about the open-source promise when Jobs announced it on stage. It could very well have been a spur of the moment decision made on stage.

(Not that it absolves Apple from failing to do it)

Perhaps because nobody can seriously expect Apple to commit to openness (this is the company that forbids open source licenses in its app store), where Google was already using an open protocol?

I don't think Apple actually forbids open source from the app store, do they?

As far as I understand/interpret their policy: they only prohibit so-called copyleft licenses, and/or ones which would be violated inherently by the app store's binary-only distribution model.