c|net is running an interesting article about Microsoft’s Nightmare come true… and it’s name is Google.
I don’t know that there’s anything new here, per se, but it’s an interesting retrospective, especially the opening bit concerning an internal memo from 1995 (!) warning that something like this could well happen; that the web could wind up as a potential Windows-killing platform.
Personally, I think it’s just a matter of time, now. Not that Windows or Microsoft will disappear; they have too much market and brainshare to disappear overnight. However, if we get to the point where our main applications… mail, word processing, calendars, etc… all live on the web (and some great apps already do. Most of the rest… Word Processors, for example… are completely doable and are most likely in incubation in startups around the country/globe)… then the actual OS will become irrelevant. If I do all my document editing in a web application that lives at weboffice.com (or something; AFAIK that url is non-existent, but I haven’t checked it), then what difference does it make if I’m on Windows, Mac, Linux…. or Solaris, BSD, Mac Classic, Amiga, OS/2? It would make almost no difference at all.
That being said, I don’t think that client apps or desktop apps will ever completely disappear; at least, I hope not, as I still think it’s more fun to develop those than it is to develop web apps. Even the utopian vision of a “web-based OS” would not really be a web-based OS. It would be a web-based application suite that (if possible) made any and all local desktop applications unnecessary. To use this web-based apptopia would still require that your host machine have some sort of GUI and a compatible browser (*cough* Firefox *cough*). Technically, that’s all it would need.
Will this happen? I’d say… definitely probably. One thing is certain; if you wanted to be the one who designs the next web-based Office suite, the time to start coding is yesterday. Have fun.
