Microsoft's Web platform and why Windows devices remain key
That's the title of my latest post on ZDNet. I'm pointing to it here because Bloglines is for some reason not fetching the Web 2.0 Explorer feed, so the 56 people who've subscribed already in Bloglines (in just a couple of days - wow!) have not yet been notified of the new post.
In it I discuss the news of Microsoft's Web 2.0 platform strategy, which will give developers access to MSN (Microsoft Network) and some of its other website properties via APIs and the like. It's good news, but I've taken a different approach to it than other analysts:
"Microsoft hopes a large proportion of the population will use the Web via millions of its Internet-connected 'devices' - such as mobile phones, media centers in the home (e.g. controlled from your television set), games machines, even the good old traditional PC. These devices will run on, you guessed it, the Windows OS and they will be Microsoft's interface into Web 2.0."
Just after I wrote that, I came across Tim O'Reilly's post Why Microsoft can't best Google, based on Phil Wainewright's post. I left a comment on Tim's post that, like Google, Microsoft too will "extend its reach to any device that does go online". That was my main point in the ZDNet post. So I think Microsoft can beat Google - they will adapt.
Also Alex Barnett from Microsoft offers his views on the news. I'm looking forward to Robert Scoble's comments, especially after he's just interviewed Bill Gates! I wonder if any Google employees will blog about it (yeah right).
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Adaptation does not mean "success" when entering a new market. XBox still lags behind the PlayStation, for example. Web developers are now hopefully so used to cross-platform web development and/or complying with standards, that I think there is actually hope that consumers will actually have voice and choice in the issue of which of the "paths to the platform" they choose, and that more of them will choose based on technical superiority than market-share and marketing hype, as has often been the case in the past.... As long as we are at least heading towards an era in which technical and usability superiority counts for something more than market-entrenchment, I'll be happy.
But the moment they give up the goal of owning the platform, in my mind, they've already lost, because they can't "embrace, extend, extinguish".
If they can own enough (at least a majority) of the "paths to the platform" they can later divert those paths elsewhere, helping to extinguish the platform. That is the future I imagine them aiming for - in a long-term sense. Long-term strategic thinking is dangerous for a big company to do in an era in which things happen at the speed of "Internet time".
Excellent points Andrew and I agree there is a very real possibility of Microsoft - or Google - to own enough of the pathways to the platform to then effectively control the platform.
Is it such a real possibility? (The "effectively controlling the platform" part.)
Even if it is, isn't the possibility of Web 3.0 making Web 2.0 largely irrelevant, and thus commoditizing "access" itself, also a real possibility - if Web 2.0 makes the platform irrelevant because the web becomes the platform, then does Web 3.0 make the "web as platform" irrelevant because _ (something practically instantly more ubiquitous than the web) becomes the platform? The changing world makes for possibilities difficult to imagine, and control has plusses and minuses.