Written by John Milan and edited by Richard MacManus. John is Senior Software Architect and founder of TeamDirection.
The days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered, but so are the days of exclusively web-based apps...
The two
elephants of personal computing these days are Microsoft and Google.
Microsoft rose to dominance by capturing the desktop. Google is rising to dominance by
capturing the web. Both strategies revolve around who can capture your data.
Elephants require massive amounts of food to survive, so it's no surprise that Microsoft
and Google are eyeing each other's data. Microsoft has started a 'Live' initiative to engage Google on the web.
Google has tinkered with productivity apps that
might just work offline, to
join Microsoft on the desktop. If either Microsoft or Google is successful at grabbing
the other's data, the most useful byproduct of their efforts will be new ways to easily
move data between the desktop and web. The result of this battle will further blur
the lines between purely desktop and exclusively web applications.
But as often happens when elephants trample the landscape, they create new opportunities for smaller, more nimble animals to grow and prosper. As Microsoft and Google narrow their focuses on each other, they will either fail to notice the landscape is changing underfoot, or will be unable to adapt quickly enough. It's not just naive optimism; there's plenty of historical precedent. Just as Ford couldn't build all the world's cars, AT&T all the world's telephones and IBM all the world's computers - neither Microsoft nor Google will be able to write all the world's software. In fact, the very rise of Google demonstrated this to Microsoft. As a result, the consumer and business software markets are poised to open up as never before.
Can a
foundation become an elephant? And not elephant as a pejorative, but as a measure of
power - the power to change the environment around you. The Gates Foundation is such an
elephant. The Heritage Foundation has certainly
had an outsized impact. In the software world, the foundation to keep an eye on is Mozilla. How does a lizard become an elephant? By
doing something nobody thought possible, of course. Take on a product that dominates the
web experience and is embedded in over 90% of the world's computers, carve a niche for
yourself with inspired innovation and market yourself into one of the top ten brands
in the world.
Though there may be infinite user interface features to invent, I would like to see Firefox address the area in most distress: data distribution and replication. The browser is uniquely positioned among all applications as the desktop gateway to every existing web application. It's so obvious it seems trivial. It's not. Just as every desktop app needs an OS, every web application needs a browser. Forget standards, pay no attention to partnerships and don't let XML web services fool you - the web browser represents a GREAT opportunity to connect web applications together.
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 box named 'EMail'. It's time for the next step. The browser should start recognizing the concept of email and be able to offer suggestions for fields of similar ilk. It wouldn't even be that hard.
Have you noticed the anti-phishing features included in the latest browser releases? Solving the phishing problem is cool, but the method is even cooler: the browser constantly checks against a server for the latest exploits. What if a browser started keeping rich profiles of sites? And what if Mozilla started defining some common field groups, like 'User Information,' as rich data types? Mozilla could define rich data types and provide canonical lists of field names describing them. A web designer could then tag their forms to match rich types. Perhaps they match Mozilla's canonical names or perhaps they upload a field mapping to a Mozilla server. Much like checking the anti-phishing server, Mozilla could check this server for a site's rich data mappings and syntax turns into semantics.
With its popular browser, penchant for innovation and willingness to extend what the user experience can be, Mozilla has a chance to solidify itself among the giants and lay the groundwork for a real semantic web.
Richard
MacManus recently reviewed
Jeremy Jaech's latest company, Trumba. Mr. Jaech has enjoyed incredible success with two
desktop business applications: PageMaker and Visio. Rather than rest on his laurels, his
latest venture seeks to unify calendaring systems. It's an excellent idea - certainly a
sweet spot for data distribution and replication issues. If Trumba can pull it off, it
will certainly grow and Mr. Jaech will indeed have a well-deserved hat trick.
However, while the idea is excellent, Trumba has an implementation problem: they have no desktop presence. In order to achieve ubiquity, Trumba is providing calendaring customizations and is pushing standards for web designers. This might work, but what about all the desktop organizers? What about Blackberries, SideKicks and cell phones? And if you're not online, it's impossible to read your current event information at all. Perhaps this is why consumers are still grappling with Trumba. Though the company is well rooted in desktop business apps, they seem a bit mired with a philosophical devotion to a 100% web solution. As a result, though consumers can see the basic problem and Trumba sounds interesting, the solution isn't compelling enough.
I think they need to return to their roots a bit and develop a browser plugin. Something to give them a foothold on the desktop, able to synchronize with mobile devices and, most importantly, synchronize with the most common personal organizers. Start with MS Outlook. Entertain Thunderbird. But by all means make it a one-button-and-done issue for the consumer to note an event and publish it to every relevant device. Perhaps a Google calendar, perhaps a Blackberry or cell phone - most likely all of the above. Remember it's the browser that offers a connection point today. Maybe you can convince everyone to adopt your calendars and your standards tomorrow. But if you make it work today, then you can dictate instead of cajole.
Strangely enough, a company is attempting to do something similar right now. SpanningSync works only for the Mac, but that's never stopped a good idea before.
By happy geographic coincidence, Trumba and my company TeamDirection are both located in Seattle. If I've gotten anything wrong, then I offer to be re-educated in person. Perhaps they have a suggestion or two for my project management solution. Like Trumba, TeamDirection is focusing on connecting tools together - in this case bidirectional synchronizing with MS Project, MindJet MindManager, SharePoint and Groove. I won't bore you with the details here, but I'd be happy to here.
One company has
all the needed pieces on the desktop, but is searching for the right server parts. It's
the best software company you've never heard of, even though it has a market
capitalization of $22 billion US. It's the company that liked Mr. Jaech's PageMaker so
much that they bought it. They were even critical to YouTube's success, yet somehow
stayed out of the headlines. Of course the company is Adobe Systems. (Full Disclosure:
John Milan is a former Adobe employee and owns some stock.)
Adobe's purchase of Macromedia was also a masterstroke, giving them two ubiquitous desktop applications, PDF and Flash, that derive much of their value by working across the web and across different systems. Adobe is currently touting their Apollo project, which looks like a very promising lure for developers. As they state:
"Apollo is targeted at developers who are currently leveraging web technologies, such as Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript and Ajax techniques to build and deploy Rich Internet Applications."
In other words, it's a toolset that anticipates desktop and web convergence. If they can convince enough developers to sign on to their Apollo platform, then Adobe won't need to build any server parts - all those developers will do it for them.
It's an audacious strategy which has been flying mostly under the radar. While Microsoft and Google have been trying to encroach on each other's turf, Adobe has been trying to move the whole playing field. I believe if they can include a few popular mobile devices as well, it just might work. According to Adobe, their HTML rendering engine was chosen because it works on mobile devices, so they're thinking along the same lines.
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.
Who will the winners be? To borrow a catchphrase, "Just follow the data." The key for success will be how easily data can be identified, distributed and synchronized. Soon enough it will be immaterial where your event or task originated. Instead, what will matter is that your data being everywhere and in sync.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Elephants and Evolution - How the Landscape is Changing for Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Adobe.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2847
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You seem to forget Apple, but it is one of the most important players. We may move from desktop office to web2.0 office as on-line document editing becomes trivial. But the "new office" is media authoring: welcome iLife.
iLife is important not just because it is a great package (there are better). It's important because it comes into every single Mac sold by Apple. I think it will be the new de-facto productivity suite for a while -for the rest, you just need a browser.
Posted by: Panayotis Vryonis | November 1, 2006 5:59 AMWell done John! One of the best posts that I have read on RWW so far.
I am also betting on Adobe, that it will have bigger impact on the web in the future , much greater than everyone thinks. Afterall Flash plugin is the most ubiqutous software in the world.
Posted by: Janusz | November 1, 2006 6:02 AMI sure hope it's NOT Adobe - despite all that they have done for the print industry, in the web environment, they've done nothing but hold the internet back with their non-standard non-accessible and proprietary tools such as GoLive. Even the acrobat product becomes more heavy-handed and memory-intensive with each new release, I've gotten to the point of installing OTHER pdf reader software (which works much better!).
Adobe has never quite "got" the internet. Perhaps the best example is their PDF plugin that provides the user no feedback as a large PDF is downloading. If Adobe ends up with sizable marketshare, it will likely be the end of quality development tools for the web.
Posted by: Pete Nelson | November 1, 2006 6:58 AMPersonally, I think the solution you're getting at, in Mozilla terms, is XUL. If that technology was mature enough, I know I'd be developing my business applications in it.
Apps can have a native look and feel, file system access (with permissions) for offline data storage, and a fully dynamic, AJAX-y interface talking to web services.
They're sitting on a goldmine there. Mature the platform, work out the show-stopping bugs. Promote it as a way to develop and deploy internal business web applications where the platform is controlled. Commercial apps will inevitably follow.
Microsoft has XAML, I believe. I understand it to be the same basic thing (I could be wrong). Boiling either approach down, you have an application platform in the browser and server controlled and delivered applications via http. Zero-install applications (once the browser is present).
Man, I always get fired up when I talk about XUL. Anyway, that's my two cents.
Posted by: Doug Van Horn | November 1, 2006 7:41 AMA very thought provoking read!
A question, when you say "Data" do you mean documents, images, files, etc.? Or do you mean personal information such as address, location, preferences? Or both?
I think that the verdict is still out on how much people really trust their web browser and web sites to store personal information and content that is not for public consumption. The browser has, and will continue to be a constant target. Despite the best efforts of the technology (pop up blockers, phishing filters, warnings), users seem determined take actions that they should not.
The Adobe situation is an interesting one. Flash is now in its 8th version. From a developer's perspective Flash is not a great environment. It's buggy, proprietary and requires some design talent to really make it sing. This may change with Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia. Adobe has traditionally put out rock solid software. Macromedia has not, and there is a chance that Adobe will teach MM's staff a thing or two. From a management perspective; finding resources that can really make Flash worth its while is difficult. And the utility of the Flash interface, once complete is limited. It cannot be effectively deployed outside of the browser container. There are also some underlying issues with using Flash as a total deployment solution: It’s not searchable, client resource utilization is an issue (namely CPU) and without a decent amount of programming work a browser refresh will cause loss of state within the Flash environment. These issues all add up to an unworkable solution and it is why most sites will use Flash widgets to perform specific functions that are best done in Flash, such as streaming video, product demos, or interactive widgets. The overall container for most sites though is HTML. Also, to acquire the true Flex development environment be prepared to spend between 6K – 20K per CPU and another 1K per development seat. I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
There is another technology that is coming down the pike that I think is going to change the way that applications are built and how users come to expect applications to function. The Microsoft Presentation Foundation and XAML are going to blur the lines of what is web and what is desktop. Some might say it’s the new ActiveX for IE. However I think that it’s far more than that – because the applications and components that are used in your XAML applications can be reused in your desktop applications and potentailly handheld applicaion. Ultimately, XAML based applications will run on Web, Desktop and Handheld devices and support multiple devices and interfaces depending on how much engineering time is invested.
Ultimately the browser will prove insufficient to deploy any application of significant size or complexity (AJAX based applications come to mind). Memory management, lack of a true drawing interface, and scripting as the primary interaction language are just some of the issues that application builders must overcome. A collaborative effort between the host operating system and the browser will be required. So far, the only two companies that seem to get this are Adobe and MS.
Posted by: Logan Greenlee | November 1, 2006 8:13 AMI agree wholeheartedly with this approach. One thing that the world of Business IT has struggled with is software deployment, patch management, asset management, online / offline working, ubiquity of access and a whole raft of other things in this space. Some organisations jumped into the 'deploy no business apps to the desktop' as a result of the intial dotCom boom. Browser delivered applications that offered 'self service' and sat within a 'dashboard'. It was the start of the portal world. I remember some talk of launching desktop based applications from within a browser. Citrix, Lotus Notes and other key players were within this space. Microsoft Office has long had integration with the web, look at the online Clip Art features. What users want is the pervasiveness of a 'roaming profile' where they can move between computers without having to record all of their personal settings again. Windows Live seeks to achieve this, as .Mac has for the Apple world, and Google has a few offerings too. The .NET framework has it's 'click once' Windows Forms application, although you need the .NET framework to install them. And as has been mentioned above XAML offers the promise of improving this 'zero install' application world.
Then again wasn't this what Java was seeking to do with it's applets? I'm not convinced any of this is new thinking it just starting to look more convincing and doable these days. And if it really does save organisations money, then it's good in my book.
Posted by: Gary | November 1, 2006 8:26 AMLogan:
As someone who learned to program for the Flash platform, I can clear up some of your misinformation if you'll allow me. From a developer's perspective, the Flash authoring environment that most of us are familiar with is really a design environment and anyone coming from a C or Java background won't be comfortable with the implied concepts. However neither the Flash IDE or player are buggy so please explain exactly what you've encountered while working with it.
From a management perspective, I couldn't agree more that choosing a technology should be based on needs. And I agree that using just one technology for a project hasn't been realistic for a while now. But it can be deployed outside the browser very easily and can be interfaced with from wrapper applications by competent programmers. SEO inside the flash player is being addressed by third parties, and for that reason I don't recommend an entire website be made in flash if it needs to be indexable (some don't though).
Again, I'm not sure where you reached the conclusion that a flash application is CPU intensive as even our low-end testing laptops can run and compile them. Browser refresh will plague almost all platforms as 'refresh' is a browser concept which we're attempting to step over ;) And your Flex information is outdated as well :) . It has changed! (and it changed rather quickly)
In short, take some time to explore the Flash platform, but more importantly, explore the new technology that John was really talking about: Apollo. It isn't Flash and it isn't a new browser.
From my tinkering with XAML, I find it very similar to web development practices, so it should find the same great acceptance that Flex has already found. And I'm sure Microsoft will make it available to at least a few more platforms in order to compete with Adobe's completely cross-platform solutions. But Microsoft hasn't released definitive plans so anything we say here is purely speculation.
Adobe's Apollo platform with be publicly available in early 2007 and they plan release soon after. Great work Adobe!
Posted by: James Lyon | November 1, 2006 9:04 AMA few corrections to Logan's somewhat outdated information. Flash is in it's 9th version and, as mentioned in the original article, Adobe's Apollo project breaks Flash out of the browser container.
Also, there are many free ways to develop the server-side part of a Flex app beyond Adobe's pricey server software. Recently, an Adobe employee has been playing with putting a Flex front end on TurboGears (an open source web framework) apps. Using the free compiler and a free server side toolkit you *can* make good Flex apps for free. (I'm sure the IDE makes the development more pleasant, though!)
I personally find Microsoft's recent work interesting, but I'm a Mac user so it's only interesting on an academic level.
Posted by: Kevin Dangoor | November 1, 2006 9:08 AMGary said:
>> One thing that the world of Business IT has struggled with is software deployment, patch management, asset management, online / offline working, ubiquity of access and a whole raft of other things in this space.
One application that does this already for email, calendar, chat, tasks and even a blog type is KomeraMail. it is basically a java applet which works offline and online. The applet can be downloaded to any device (hard drive, USB) and launched wherever there is a java capable browser. Can be used online as well. User account can be stored online and offline with synchronisation between the two.
Go to http://komera.com/jxta/email.html
Posted by: Juvenal Sahiri | November 1, 2006 9:43 AMAnyone who's interested in "test driving" Adobe's Flex language for building Flash-based web applications should visit http://try.flex.org/. There are a couple of canned-examples to let you see what you can build with just a dozen or so lines of code. No registration or commitment required. :)
Posted by: Brian Swartzfager | November 1, 2006 11:40 AMGoogle is one of the biggest, if not the biggest contributor to Mozilla. There are (or were) jobs at Google to "write modules for Firefox". There's not a lot of separation there. It's Google's real stalking horse to the network computer.
Posted by: Adam MacDonald | November 1, 2006 11:48 AMI recently found a very interesting website:
Posted by: jack | November 1, 2006 12:23 PMhttp://alreadylinked.com/
There you can purchase ad space for your Blog etc.
Interesting article, but there is a much bigger picture ! As much as the desktop and the web metaphors are converging, so are others such as: the PC and the television, stationary and mobile data access ... Probably soon not only the "home office" will be real via one device to access not only your work, but also all your entertainment - and not only at home, but wherever you are located. Google, Microsoft and Apple are probably paying much closer look at this area of convergence than any of the others mentioned.
Posted by: Joshua Cornejo | November 1, 2006 2:11 PMThere is market gap between Browser and Desktop. Once you browser the web, some information you want to save, what tools do you use, Notepad or MS Word? or Save As. Soon you will lost folder and file forest. Here comes Tablane's TClipper. Capture web page, fine, create your own notes, fine, using del.icio.us like tag system, fine, they all integrated in the TClipper system. This software is easy to install and to use. You can use it to setup persional reference library, and will not be lost in folders and files.
Posted by: Mike | November 1, 2006 3:09 PMWeb site: http://www.tablane.com
Although this is a tiny company, it also has a browser product, Tablane Browser, you can parallel view web side(Lane view).
Is this really anything new? Isn't this just client/server?
The technology will continue to merge, but it won't necessarily mean that web data will be shared with private data.
What requirement does the enterprise have to share data beyond the closed network of the enterprise?
And Microsoft own that....
Posted by: Peter | November 1, 2006 3:43 PMThanks for everyone's responses. You'll have to give me a chance to think over your thoughtful comments. I'm literally doing a build of our latest stuff as I type.
However, a friend of mind pointed out this article about Blake Ross's new venture Parakey:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/nov06/4696
"A Parakey e-mail program, on the other hand, provides a single access point for your mail, ‚Äúunifying the desktop and the Web,‚Ä? in Ross‚Äôs words."
Sounds Interesting.
Posted by: John Milan | November 1, 2006 4:38 PMA very interesting site, I think. The Idea of Technometry was new for me but worth to be read and thought abot it (although I'm not a native english-speaker and have some difficulties whith this language)
Posted by: Onlineshop Suchmaschinenoptimierung | November 1, 2006 4:55 PMWell, let's put it like this:
1. Mozilla is not an elephant, because it plays in other dimensions. Who wants software to be implemented into software? Why would Iwant to seek you in Firefox????
I wanna seek you in my online operation system, no matter the browser I use, no matter the place I am at, no matter the device I am using...
Google and Microsoft truly aimed for the web, but are they aimiing for the next step? Next step is to come out with a internet operation system.
Meaningan equivalent to Windows/Linux etc on the web,
meaning you get an awfully strong API, and a core system for every user to use.
Posted by: BenShiNon | November 1, 2006 7:52 PMYou add that developers can programm on the web, put things into the web, improve each others addin modules and publish it directly within teh framework. you will see, it will happen.
And if Google n MS aint doint it, someone will do it.
i agree; great article; though, instead of destop/web...i think we are moving to complete systems...or various systems...
one thing I find really stupid though, is how microsoft haters love google's web based office system, when all microsoft has to do, is integrate web/internet functionality...and that's it.
Posted by: lemon obrien | November 2, 2006 12:14 AMI think you're right John but you've misattributed the technology stalking horse.
Adobe's Apollo platform is built on top of Apple's WebKit technology that it uses in Safari, Dashboard and numerous other client side applications. It's where the 'canvas' HTML feature comes from that's now in Firefox that allows breaking outside the confines of the browser. It also supports local apps written in scripting languages like Ruby, Python, PHP and heavier languages like Objective-C. And of course it supports Flash. At this point Adobe, Nokia and Apple are all sitting in the same boat here, all using WebKit. Adobe's recent revelation that Apollo uses WebKit and on Windows too is very interesting. There's only been betas of the Win32 WebKit port so far.
Microsoft's XAML and Mozilla's XUL are proprietary to each of their own platforms. WebKit uses HTML, CSS and normal languages that developers are already accustomed to and works across platforms from MacOSX, Windows, Linux and Nokia's S60 Symbian platform. There's already thousands of Dashboard widgets on the Mac, most of which will run just fine on the other ports of WebKit. And of course there's tonnes of cross platform development tools for HTML, CSS etc.
Apple have also been refreshing their .Mac service of late with a stellar online Mail application akin to GMail but with the looks of Apple's desktop Mail application including drag and drop. Just a pity they still charge for .Mac when Google do it for free and give you more.
Apple have been blurring the lines between desktop and online for quite some time but only recently have they been making moves cross platform. In OSX 10.5 they're adding loads of collaboration technology from expanded syncing to CalDAV support and a collaboration service on OSX Server.
So, watch Apple more closely.
Posted by: Shaun | November 2, 2006 3:27 AMDesktop apps are in no danger of dying out soon. remember there are millions of clueless users who can't even keep their computer virus free let alone fiddle around with webapps!
Posted by: Spreadsheet | November 2, 2006 6:01 AMInteresting post John. Thanks for this.
Needless to say we couldn’t agree more.
@Doug Van Horn et. al.
We've built a pretty robust application on the XUL platform, which provides online and offline functionality. We’re still in beta (who isn’t these days!), but the application is being used by tens of thousands of media creators the world over. So, the proof of the pudding being in the eating, you can provide the best of both worlds to users.
Originally we had conceived of our application as a pure web service, but our early users were adamant about having local control of their data. Writers in particular where hesitant to use a web only app to do any amount of power typing.
At the same time, we recognized that the world was headed online, so we didn’t want to end up stymied later on by a client only architecture.
Fortunately for us, the Moz platform provided a beautiful way for us to achieve our design objectives. It lets us provide users with local file storage married to a Server architecture that fosters collaboration, publishing and offsite content management.
Mark
Posted by: Mark Kennedy | November 2, 2006 6:12 AMAbout Mozilla... You are not talking about a browser feature, that is the Semantic Web, that is XML - HTML by implementation only defines formatting, not meaning. In a semantic web environment you can define the meaning as well. For example if you place a number inside tags, you can create a rule set the browser could then use to know this is a price. Having mozilla maintain the datbase is unncesary, as each XML file can define a location where the tags and ontology are defined. This allows not only forms, but all data to be smart. With a lack of central managment, it is easier for individuals to maintain their control over the meaning. A schema could easily be defiend and standardized in order for developers to give meaning to their forms, then a browser, any browser, could store wallet type information and autofill forms (is autofilling forms really something new or novel anyway?). Also is not Mozilla big on standards? Wouldn't these changes and ideas have to be implemented over by the W3C guys?
Posted by: WebDesginHero | November 2, 2006 6:58 AMYou can use Firefox only technology and still target 100% of desktops, and that is NOT true with Microsoft proprietary technology.
As one poster wrote:
"Microsoft's XAML and Mozilla's XUL are proprietary to each of their own platforms."
But, Mozilla's XUL is available on all desktops through a simple download of Firefox, and is open source. Being open source, there is no one company that can use it to prevent free and open competition.
And, this is exactly what might cause a tipping point: A killer application that requires Firefox and drives Firefox downloads. At some point, if alternative browser (and OS) usage is high enough, companies will start targeting Firefox instead of Windows/IE, since it will be the ONLY way to hit 100% of users.
Posted by: Donald Carr | November 2, 2006 7:03 AM@ Shaun
Adobe's Apollo platform is not _built_ on Webkit or any other rendering engine. It simply uses Webkit to render html if there is any at all in that specific application.
John, I'm sure you already know, but today there'll be an online presentation on Apollo by Mike Chambers of Adobe. I encourage everyone to check it out
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=detail&id=648909&loc=en_us
Posted by: James Lyon | November 2, 2006 7:11 AMDo you know if Firefox makes their money from paid Google search on their default start page and also on the google search that is built in? Is that how firefox makes their income?
Posted by: Brad | November 2, 2006 7:15 AMYou know, there are several enterprise apps that have already solved this problem of being web-based, but still supporting off-line use via browser and a client-side lite database with synch technology. Siebel 7.x has had this capability for several years now.
Posted by: rmendis | November 2, 2006 7:34 AMGreat post!
Posted by: Sunil Shibad | November 2, 2006 10:33 AMThe rise of the Invisible Web is inevitable, which is 500 times bigger than the indexed Web.
Also no company should hold a monoply, be it desktop or the Web.
On the profits of Mozilla, they get paid for various development projects, such as Nokia paid them to make a version of Firefox for phones, they get donations, but the biggest chunk comes from Google paying them everytime somebody searches from the tool bar. And, Google also contributes by paying a number of developers to work on Firefox.
Obviously, Google has a lot of reasons to support Firefox and make sure that Microsoft can not control the platform and use it restrict competition.
Many other companies also help with Firefox development.
Posted by: Donald Carr | November 2, 2006 1:03 PM[Shaun wrote]
> Adobe's Apollo platform is built on top of Apple's WebKit technology that it uses in Safari, Dashboard and numerous other client side applications.
Actually, it's based on the WebKit Open Source Project.
http://webkit.org/
Apple has built a framework on top of said project and also uses it for Safari.
More info:
Posted by: Mike Downey | November 2, 2006 1:05 PMhttp://www.adobe.com/go/apollo
A web OS doesn't have to be necessarily something similar to windows, mac os or linux. Google is already a web OS.
Posted by: joao | November 3, 2006 5:38 AMMicroformats, anyone?
Posted by: T.J. Crowder | November 4, 2006 11:23 AMI don't mean to interrupt, but maybe if you guys could step back one moment to see a much bigger picture. What you will find is that none of this really matters. Big elephants, little elephants, Microsoft, Google or what ever. Just maybe it is not possible to move forward in a linear fashion to solve the problems of the web while at the same time addressing the more important issues that we should be able to attack with computers and the internet. We need a much better way for dealing with complexity on the internet and in our real world. The only thing like that in our near future is a new technology based on V2 and not the Web/Html. I am developer myself and I yearn for the day when we can move past building web pages and realize that there is a whole universe in cyber space and not just the web.
If you want a glimpse of the future you only have to open your eyes (www.webkiller.net)
Posted by: D.T. | November 18, 2006 6:59 PM