Following the tech market these days is a bit like watching a Japanese b-grade disaster movie. While Microsoft has long held the title as the heavyweight Godzilla, there is no doubt that the new 1000 pound gorilla is Google as King Kong. First it was search. Round one to the Kong. Now, if you believe the hype – the next showdown will be over web operating systems.
There is a lot to be said about web applications. Whether
you are at work, at home or in an Internet café – you can access all of your
stuff without worrying whether the computer has the right software and the
latest version of your files. For those of you with webmail accounts, this is
nothing new. But part of the hype about what analysts are calling Web 2.0, is
that all of your core enterprise and personal applications will be available to
you 24/7 via your web browser. Online Photos, files, contact lists, project
communications, music – you name it, and you can bet that somebody is raising
the money, hiring the
But what happens when you are not online? According to
blogging wunderkind Jason Kottke the next big thing will be desktop web servers
which will make using web applications seamless whether you are connected or
not. The benefits are obvious. You can dash off a few emails while sitting on
the plane or organise your Flickr photo colletions while chilling in a café.
Later when you reconnect, your web applications will synchronise. From a
development perspective, programmers need only code one application, which can
then run on web servers customised for individual operating system
environments. Not unlike the way Java works.
The problem with Kottke’s “the web is the platform’
argument is that cached web applications don’t replace a native operating
system, they just reduce the relative importance of one system over another.
You might prefer the aesthetics of Apple OS X to Windows XP, but at the end of
the day, if most of your work is done on browser based applications, you
probably don’t really care which platform you use. The real question is whether
the new portal players care.
Although both Yahoo and Google are making moves into the
application space, you have to question the logic of them trying to recreate an
entire operating environment. There are only three things that should matter to
a modern day search and media network - getting more registered users, widening
the addressable scope of your search queries, and making more money. Sticky web
applications certainly have the potential of delivering on all three of those
goals.
Yet as browser based applications reduce the strategic
value of creating your own operating system, there is increasingly less upside
for portals to go after the whole enchilada. For what its worth, industry commentator Robert Cringely thinks Bill has more to worry about from Steve, than either
Larry or Sergey. His Redmond Doomsday scenario has Apple using the iPod as a
bootable hard drive to distribute a free version of OS X capable of running on
PCs and replacing Windows in one fell swoop. Unlikely, sure. But it would
certainly have made the iPod Nano announcement a hell of lot more interesting.
Conceptually web application sweetspots fall into three
categories – collaboration, storage and organisation tools. Applications that
are about people working together make much more sense as a network hosted
tool. Whether it be project management (Basecamp), communications (Gmail) or
even sales force automation (Salesforce.com) – the downsides of a browser based
interface are easily outweighed by the benefits of better connectivity.
Storage management is another obvious candidate. Users
want to be able to backup, access and share relevant work documents and
personal multimedia. There are a few offerings in this space (Mac.com and
Box.net), but it is surprising just how inefficient this process still is.
Finally there needs to be a whole set of data organisation tools which will
allow people to search, prioritise and associate their network data objects.
Some of this can be achieved by good desktop search tools, but the future
applications that come from colliding better group calendaring (iCal) with
personal organisation (Backpack) tools may create new market niches which have
no analogue in today’s software products.
Rest assured. This is not a secret reprise of the fat vs thin client debate, which quite frankly is boring and has been doing the rounds of the IT industry since the days of punch cards. For a while, it even surfaced in the late nineties with the ill fated ASP fad. The logic this time round is not hard to follow. I want a fast PC. But I also want a smart network which follows me wherever I go. And although I love my Google search, my Yahoo photos, my Apple iPod and my Windows productivity tools – you can bet that I and everyone else will happily jump ship with whoever makes our lives easier first.
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