Yep. Let’s give up our applications and go with just the browser. Okay. Because, after all, you don’t need apps. Okay. Microsoft is dead (again), the browser is all you need, network computers, hosted everything. Right. Scoble and 60,000 other people in Redmond, polish your resumes, it’s over kids.
Oh, and we don’t need desktops because we have the big network in the sky taking care of back ups and your life. Okay. Right..
Heres’ the, whoo hooo, new features in Gmail.
Right. Auto-save and Exporting for back-up. Back-up? Isn’t that Web 1.0? Isn’t that yesterday? We don’t do back up any more because it’s hosted, it’s “up there” and why on earth would the good ship Google want to encourage you to back up anything? It’s all free, remember? It’s all up there, all comfy cozy, safe on the network. Oh that’s right, silly me, they are good guys telling the truth which is “app or web service, doesn’t matter, back yer stuff up, bunkie.”
I’ve seen bitching about security with browsers (aka IE). I’ve seen complaints about crappy performance, no tabs, no this, no that. I’ve seen the firefox team claim all kinds of things (lots of them true) about why Firefox is better then IE. And for sure I’ve had Microsoft office crash on me causing me no end of grief. But rarely can I find a time that I’ve been entering a blog posting, commenting on a forum, or doing any text entry in yahoo mail, where the browser crashed. But I’m sure it happens and Google is right to offer a solution that you find in, shhhh, applications! Auto-Save in a web services application, yessss, we have arrived.
(The reverse argument here is that this shows that web services can be both as rich and feature complete as a desktop application, understood but it also means that as you stuff all these features/requirements into the rich web app you get, well, you get an app. You can argue hosted is better, etc, etc, that’s for another day, I got it, tho..)
So while Jonathan Schwartz spouts his desktop is dead , give up your applications nonsense, let me suggest this to you:
1. Ignore browser vs. app debates, they are for tech people with too much time on their hands.
2. Focus on solutions. You have a problem and there are options to solve your problem. Solve the problem and the features that solved it are what you want/need. It’s a nice closed loop that gets you satisfied.
And this isn’t a rant on Google, I use everything they offer, this is my observation that what’s ‘new’ isn’t always so ‘new’ rather much of this Just Launched!, is simply what you have to have in order to be a serious solution for people’s problems.
I like you am sick of hearing about the death of the rich client. I'm sorry, but while Gmail is nice, it isn't Thunderbird, it isn't Mail.app, and it certainly isn't Outlook. I've had the same benefits of Gmail (accessing the same email from anywhere, etc) since 1996 with IMAP. I don't know why people spend so much time reinventing the wheel.
Since I'm working for a startup building Internet applications, I am a little touchy on the rich client versus web client thing, because we're selling a rich client. You have to download the application and install it. How old-fashioned. We'll be offering a web version, but the experience will be much poorer. The web ain't everything folks. Listen to Rick, buy solutions, not ideologies. Whatever works.
Posted by: Clint Sharp | October 06, 2005 at 02:34
From my perspective, the point of Web 2.0 services isn't to replace desktop applications, but to make it possible to build web applications that are on a par with desktop ones, while allowing you to also use them with thin or thick clients on the desktop.
Take Gmail as an example. Gmail works perfectly well as a simple POP account, and if you want to download everything into Outlook you can - all good. But because of the amount of storage, you no longer have to use your desktop client as an archive for your email, meaning you can use it for the things it's best at: offline work, contact management (if you're using Outlook) and so on.
The same goes for something like Writely. Writely has taken over some of the tasks I used Word for - jotting down ideas, short documents that ultimately go on the web, and so on - but it doesn't replace Word. What I really want is a version of Word that uses a Writely API to store documents online, to round-trip between using a word processor in a browser when I need to and using a fat client to work on the same documents when I need to. That's the ultimate promise of Web 2.0 to me - the ability to forget that something's online or off, and just use the data in the application that's most appropriate.
Posted by: Ian Betteridge | October 06, 2005 at 04:58
Ian your web 2.0 sounds like Remote Desktop to me.
Why reinvent the wheel when you can borrow a Lamborghini?
Posted by: Shaded | October 06, 2005 at 10:40
I see a web 2.0 bubble and soon it will go POP!
Posted by: MK | October 07, 2005 at 03:57
"Ian your web 2.0 sounds like Remote Desktop to me."
http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/2005/10/03.html#a91
(Google Dumps Web Standards)
Posted by: Dennis Forbes | October 07, 2005 at 08:43
Which just proves nobody should claim ownership of good ideas.
... or why my bank account is so .... depressing.
Brilliant post by the way. I havn't even figured out what AJAX means yet, but HTML and DHTML and all that nonsense always seemed a lot like RIPscript to me.
Posted by: Shaded | October 07, 2005 at 12:10