As an alternative he offered Google's approach with its platforms -- like the Open Social initiative for common social application APIs and the Android mobile operating system -- to open source all or portions of them.

To this, Treadwell defended the need for certain platforms to be controlled by a specific vendor, and challenged Google to release into the community the motor of its business: its search engine and ad platforms.

Gundotra retorted that he isn't advocating total community control, saying that a balance can be struck that also contemplates a vendor running a business on the Web platform. "The big story in the last 10 years has been Windows versus the Web, and the Web has won," he said.

At another point Gundotra took a contrarian view, telling his fellow panelists that the important thing isn't to extend any specific platform, but to focus efforts on improving the common Web that all of them use.

Facebook's Schrage cautioned that, while collaborating on ways to improve the underlying Web is certainly important, vendors should continue pushing ahead with advances in their own platforms and not slow down while questions about Web standards get worked out.