Landscape Is Changing For Microsoft and Google 122
ReadWriteWeb writes "John Milan, Senior Software Architect and founder of TeamDirection, writes about the convergence of Web and Desktop. He argues that Microsoft and Google are focusing so much on each other, that both will either fail to notice the landscape is changing underfoot — or will be unable to adapt quickly enough. The article concludes that the days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered, but so are the days of exclusively web-based apps. Both Microsoft and Google are racing toward a happy medium. However, they aren't the only players in town, not by a long shot. Both Mozilla and Adobe are well positioned to take advantage of desktop and web convergence."
Browser OS (Score:2, Funny)
Now we are starting to have Office Apps in the browser.
In the near future all your OS will be in your browser/server.
Your good old Desktop OS will be just to start your browser.
Re:Browser OS (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, because of course we need to waste all that computer power on the desktop by just running a browser, and then sell hundreds of expensive mainframes^H^H^H servers to do the real processing.
Than, after a few years, someone will come up with the revolutionary idea of a "personal computer", and we'll go round the loop again.
Re:Balanced computing (Score:1)
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graphicallyspeaking [kotay.com]
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The hardware certainly changes. Every year it takes more processing power to do the same thing.
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If it did, it would crucify the performance of the Google servers, wouldn't work on about 10% of browsers, and would require an army of programmers to maintain the arcane code written in a bizarre programming language, 90% of which would consist of workarounds for the quirks of 739 different browser versions.
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Since controlling low level hardware communitcations like this is what the OS does, I guess we can just rename the "OS" to the "browser". If thats the case does that mean MS was right all along and the browser really does belong in the OS?
Re:Browser OS (Score:5, Funny)
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In the future, all browsers will be a webapps! Then, the Internet will collapse because of the resulting paradox.
No no no, it's simple. You'll only need a desktop browser to bootstrap the web app browser. Once it's running, you won't need the desktop browser any more!
Rich.
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You laugh, but that's pretty close to what the Mozilla-based browsers do. They are basically an empty window that gets filled by some sort of web technology. (XUL in the case of FireFox.) The HTML rendering pane is just another control inside a web document. That rendering pane could theoretically hold another copy of FireFox inside of it, as it can render XUL just as well as HTML.
I have actually done a web browser inside of a webbrowser by
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The end is near! [bittybrowser.com]
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I'm sure we all know that we really want to play Quake inside a browser. No, the Desktop OS will never go away and browsers are not the best tool for every job, any more than screwdrivers have made hammers obsolete. I can't really say any use in a program that's half web based and half desktop based. Except perhaps to use a browser component to access web pages from within the application. Any other information can be handled by a proprietary networking app/ser
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So, then you have no use for:
All of these are half-web and half-desktop.
Citrix (Score:2)
It has a lot of problems (not least of which is the way that Microsoft requires you to buy software licenses), but it's quite popular in business.
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Never used them.
Tried one, didn't like it
Isn't web based at all as far as I can tell.
There are better ways than Microsoft Update, and I don't like or trust their garbage proprietary must-use-IE software.
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The performance gains to be had by building a proprietary application server are easily offset by the opportunity costs of having to release later because you didn't use standard web protocols. What we're see
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Similar to the current model of the boxed versions of Norton/McAfee for those products.
As consoles will continue to do more than just play games, there will likely be a convergence of the two(consoles and PC).
You will be able to view data (files,pictures, etc...) on either a console or a PC that you store on a personal SAN.
One of the th
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Microsoft is not in a battle with Google (Score:1)
Just like Internet, Microsoft provides the infrastructure upon which online services may run.
Mozilla and Adobe are in an enviable position of providing tools for people to build useful applications upon.
Google, OTOH, needs to rely on constant innovation and development of markets in order to keep their revenue stream growing.
Who are Microsoft's competitors? Apple and Linux.
Who are Google's? You and me.
Google's not in any favorable
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Google are in the very favourable position of being able to buy emerging market leaders/market dominators. They don't need to innovate internally, they can simply wait for others to innovate and then sign a big cheque (check for you Americans). So long as they concentrate on their main goal (selling adverts) they'll stay ahead for a good while yet.
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Microsoft is not able to innovate. They can't get an OS or a GUI framework right even though most of the concepts involved were invented decades ago, so I don't think they are able to implement the stuff their R&D department comes up with in a practical way.
Besides, Microsoft has an history of being followers, not leaders. They don't introduce new th
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No, but it has to have a good usability. They are horribly lagging behind in that area. Open the project properties or the configuration manager in visual studio 2005, for instance.
As an investor I applaud those sound business practices.
And as a (potential) customer, I despise these practices. Especially when their marketing rethoric paints them as an innovative company that is out to improve the life of its customers.
But five years from now the convergen
Does this mean... (Score:1)
Anyhow.. Google has already dropped the ball as far as online applications, with the acquistion of Writely and Google spreadsheets, calendar, and email already so previlant. Microsoft needs to get on their game to keep up in the online application market.
The Network *is* The Computer (Score:5, Funny)
Usual rant from pundits... (Score:2)
This is the usual rant from pundits. Unfortunately, it does not help at all. This pundit, if he's one, doesn't tell us how exactly the "landscape is changing underfoot." These are events that are seemingly happening now, so the pundit should be able to say what is being ignored.
Advice to slashdotters: Ignore these kin
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Do any of these jackasses know what they are talking about? WTF is the "happy medium?" Some happy person who talks to the dead?
The moron says both Google and Microsoft are chasing the wrong dream but then say look out Mozilla and Adobe are catching up in your chase after the wrong dream. Earth to Houston, we have a problem here.
Look the internet is not dead nor is
I'll use desktop applications as long as I can. (Score:1, Informative)
I have not been impressed by any of the Web-based applications, especially those that make heavy use of AJAX. I've found them to be nothing blow slow, bloated pieces of fecal matter. Instead of helping me get my work done efficiently, they become a productivity barrier. To me, that's unacceptable.
Take email. While I know a lot of people like Google's GMail interface, I think it's horrid. It breaks stuff like opening messa
Factors to consider (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Reliability; Using all web apps or a web based OS would be ridiculous. What happens when your DS3 circuit goes down at your company? Yeah sure we already rely on the internet for job related things and internet downtime does kill productivity, but it doesn't render your computer useless, you can still write code, do accounting stuff or whatever it is that you do.
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I work for a Fortune 500 and internal applications (even those hosted on server in my site) suffer far more outages (by many orders of magnitude) than gmail and google talk.
I think it is widely accepted that the problem maintaining 100% application uptime is more difficult than network connectivity.
What is an important factor is corporate wariness from hosting data off-site.
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Sadly, this isn't the case anymore. With the increased number of apps that search servers to validate/retrieve licenses upon launch, its very
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I, for one, welcome the day when I need to rely on our propriatary code Internet overlords to run vi.
KFG
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While this is important for internet/extranet, a lot of users will employ browser apps from within their firewalls (accounts systems, for example), using internal web servers - so no weak links in connectivity.
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Not quite sure about that, when the Internet link is down, that's when a lot of us START working.
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And I think it's unlikely that many people whose jobs cause them to live in Word or Excel for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, are going to change to on-line alternatives any time soon.
But ... the are other factors. Budget for example. A lot of users do about three documents a year and spreadsheets maybe twice a decade.
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You're correct, but that's a different issue -- why do folks pay Microsoft money for MSOffice when there are free products that do the job every bit as well? Beats me. Yes, there are a small number of Microsoft office product users that genuinely need the real thing because they need VBA macros or because of their support arrangements and such. I'd put
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Content runtimes and connectivity (Score:1)
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graphically speaking [kotay.com]
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Actually, in a lot of situations you can't. My company makes windows applications that require a live database connection to work because they're u
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"The days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered, but so are the days of exclusively web-based apps."
No "all web apps or web based OS" mentioned here.
In other words, parent topic's rant about pure-web based apps, while interesting, is off topic, not to mention boring. The article's author is looking beyond Web 2.0 - why don't you give it a try as well?
Elephants? Landscape? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is a very reactive company; when the landscape changes, they will eventually adapt, though it may take years. Google, however, is setting the pace in many ways, and has a boggling number of development efforts in the works that are still ahead of most other companies. So I disagree these two companies are somehow in the same predicament.
Anyway, from the article: "The days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered, but so are the days of exclusively web-based apps. Both Microsoft and Google are racing toward a happy medium. However, they aren't the only players in town, not by a long shot. Both Mozilla and Adobe are well positioned to take advantage of desktop and web convergence. Companies offering solutions that connect desktop and web apps together will get their chance too. Calendaring and project management are two obvious choices, but every productivity app deserves to be re-examined."
The author also says "in the spirit of open source I'm happy to dispense my advice freely...." Continuing that spirit, I'm happy to modify your advice so it actually works. Adobe will never go up against Microsoft, Google or others in developing their own "web convergence" applications (word processors, calendars, whatever). Adobe is in the business of enabling communication. If that means in print, they've got it (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.). If it means in portable documents, they've got it (PDF, now FlashPaper too). If it means web development, they've got it (Flash, Dreamweaver, GoLive, Flex, Cold Fusion, etc.). Adobe makes tools for designers and builders; they don't make the end product. The author of the article has missed this point.
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But they're not goggle developments. Look at all their recent releases, pretty much all acquisitions. Google aren't on the cutting edge, they're simply buying it and that's going to be a big problem; they aren't keeping up at all with their own developments and the more they buy the more trouble there will be integrating.
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While I don't deny that the buy out a startup is a valid business strategy, I wonder if trying to do the same thing as Microsoft makes sense for a company as different as Google (I.E. they don't sell soft
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I actually think Microsoft may be ahead of the curve on this one, though it may be accidental and most people at Microsoft may not even know it. In my opinion, for all the coolness of Web 2.0, web applications are still limited. They can't do all the things desktop apps can, and if you network connection goes down, you're screwed. Where desktop apps fail is that they tie to you a specific desktop and they need to be installed. You can't just pull up Microsoft Office at your friends house unless he has i
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They won't make word processors and calendars because there's little profit to be had in that unless you can couple it with a context-sensitive ad network (like google's), which adobe doesn't have. But they are most definitely going head to head with microsoft.
Adobe is readying a flash-based platform for d
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"But they [Adobe] are most definitely going head to head with microsoft."
I agree they're going head to head with MS on web development tools. But the article was about the actual web apps, not the development tools. Adobe is not going to get into that market.
Work itself is changing (Score:2)
This affects the way we work. Traditional desktop software becomes less and less important. For example the bulk of work I used to do using a word processor now gets hammered out in wikis. An incredible, and increasing, amount of work happens just by email.
The future of online collaboration and work probably lies in today's games, anyhow.
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I get all my work done on Slashdot. I'm pretty sure that's what they pay me for.
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Eh, I'm beginning to think more and more that this is a dangerous direction that the "first world" economies are taking: they forget that real wealth comes not from talking about things, but actual matter-bashing (that is, things like agriculture, manufacturing, etc.). I don't know about you, but I don't get much "work" done when writing emails or attending meetings - I only get "real" work done when I measure physical data or cause physic
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Even if you look into a mine: There are much more people moving ore or coal from the deep pit to the surface or from the surface to the processing plant or whatever
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Writing emails, discussing on Slashdot, it's actually part of the human machine. This is how we refine solutions to complex problems that we may not even be aware of. This is how we prevent conflicts, create societies, and basically manage to be a species on holiday. (Oh, and cheap energy also helps a
hot air (Score:2)
As long as broadband is sold as content and not a service, we won't get very far.
Heard it All Before (Score:2)
Anyone have any new predictions - ones that haven't been bandied about already for 10 years?
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nonsense (Score:2)
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Free Market Competition (Score:2)
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Fighting monopolies is not about looking for "underdogs" (which means "less competitive", is that what you meant?), but about being
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The Middle Way (Score:2)
In the meantime there have been constant predictions that computing will move en-masse and irrevocably to one system or another with only slight nods to reality ( yes, we will keep the desktop PC but these will only be thin clients for our massive array of backend processing power on which everything will be run ).
This artic
The elephant in the room... (Score:1)
I think Microsoft will have the easiest time adapting at this point. They can clearly throw almost any amount of dollars at whatever new trend comes along. Look at what they're doing with the on-line music store. They seem to be waiting to see where the other people are going and then creating their version of it.
So given that they've got a pretty solid grip on the desktop end, it's not too hard to imagine them taking their 'live' stuff further until it all blends together. Google will hav
For crying out loud... (Score:1)
So
Watch out Google (Score:1)
Google doesn't have complete control over the Internet.
Who has a brighter future?
App Servers? (Score:1)
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Adobe and bloat? (Score:2)
iTunes: Example of successful convergence (Score:1)
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Why This Won't Work (Score:1)
We've tried this platform-independence idea before. It was called JAVA and despite all the promises we're still running a vast majority of architecture-dependent
Hey, I can be a software architect too! (Score:2)
2) Write in blogs as a "Software Architect"
3) ???
4) Profit!
the article is totally devoid of useful insight (Score:2)
A tautology: the thing you use to browse the web is what you use to use the web! Knock me over with a feather.
"But first the web browser needs a feature. And in the spirit of open source I'm happy to dispense my advice freely: data recognition. Right now the browser excels at data caching, which is how your email pops up on different web pages in any edit bo
elaborate crap that we see over and over (Score:2)
Check out the above crap.
This sentence has exactly the same grammar, wording and certainty of the other likewise sentences that were repeated over and over again by some "experts" (more like extra-zealous or excited tech enthusiasts) about many other subjects that became fads.
Need proof this above is a crap of bull ? think security and what problems the increasing web-desktop transiency has brought in terms of it - trojans, viruses, identity theft
Gaming (Score:1)
One place I do think that the web and the desktop are coming together is gaming. Web based games such as http://www.phantasyrpg.com/register.php?step=1&ref =122782 [phantasyrpg.com] mean that you have a client, but most of the work is done server side. This also eliminates the hassle of installing software for your platform. We will continue to develop different clients. Even i
Obligatory (Score:1, Funny)
"java web start" with eclipse rich client (Score:1)
first time around due to Java's ugly UI. Throw in the eclipse rich client and you've
got the best of all worlds. A remote client you can force updates to, the speed and
flexiblity of a thick client and it looks good with native UI components. If I have a choice
I'll use that next time.
Still, I've played with mozilla/XUL and written an in-house AJAX application. They still
leave a lot to be desired. XUL/javascript is a pain as moz
I dream about that... (Score:2)
I want a similar technology developed with a language from the Lisp family.
That would really be programmer nirvana.
Why? (Score:2)
Why should my word processor need the internet just to write a doc or open a spreadsheet? I'm sure it works out for Microsoft's marketing division just fine, but there are absolutely no benefits and a lot of disadvantages compared to running your own app locally.
What about if I want to write a document somewhere where the internet isn't availaable? e.g. on an aircraft or in a country with less internet copnnectivity?
What if I value my privacy a
This plays into Microsoft's strengths... (Score:1)
I dont read the FA (Score:2)
"The article concludes that the days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered"
That in itself is enough for me. It was the same story 10 years ago. Desktop applications are still living well and anyone involved in UI development knows they're coming back strong. The Web 2.0 hype won't live that long.
I never got this... (Score:2)
Browser OS (Score:1)
clearly numbered (Score:1)
Mozilla? (Score:1)
Makes sense, lol (Score:2)
I've been hearing about the death of the desktop for at least 20 years. It only makes sense that applications for it are finally dieing.
Client/Server applications have been around a lot longer than the WWW. However, the mainframe/smart-terminal combinations have never been popular with the end-user. The WWW, and the Internet in general, is very good at dist
FUD (Score:1)
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control (Score:2)
I want total control over my data. It is private. My business data is also not to be available to others except in ways that I determine.
I want total control over my programs. I do not want to be charged for each time I use a program. I do not want my programs changing behaviour without my explicit consent.
Right conclusion (offline clients), wrong reasons (Score:2)
The writing is on the wall people -- we're already seeing a demand for hybrid applications.
Example from my work area -- online education:
Teachers publish their course materials online, create online tests, grade assignments, lead discussion forums online. So far, so good. Now they want ways work on their mater
Convergence (Score:1)