Ian Murdock’s Weblog

Om Malik: “[O]n this Web 2.0 highway, there are three exits: Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.”

That’s a clever soundbite, and perhaps it’s true from the venture capitalist’s point of view, but I think it misses something fundamental: That the real attraction of the new web platform is that components don’t have to be rolled up into one big monolith anymore to integrate well with each other.

We’re entering into a world where lots of little, independent component providers will be able to coexist and thrive alongside the platform vendors. Why? The platform vendors no longer have such a chokehold on distribution that the best the component providers can hope for are a few years of prosperity before the platform vendor notices there’s an interesting little market emerging around a particular component, integrates the component into the platform, and renders the independent component unnecessary. In the old world, a component provider’s prosperity was often its ultimate undoing.

I’ve always sympathized with the platform vendors’ (OK, Microsoft’s) argument that this kind of integration is done in the interest of customer convenience—I for one don’t want to buy an operating system only to have to go out and source my own, say, memory management and data compression components (something, if you remember, we had to do in the MS-DOS days). In the old world, that probably meant going out, buying more software, and dealing with the headache of getting it installed and integrated. It was simply more convenient for the customer for the popular components to find their way into the platform, integrated and ready to go with no assembly required.

In the new world, though, sourcing a component is no longer a heavyweight operation. By and large, the components themselves are free, and thanks to open APIs and data formats like RSS, it’s now possible to integrate those components into larger applications with comparative ease. Granted, the applications of today are largely ad hoc “mash ups” without an intermediating platform vendor in the traditional sense, but it won’t be long, in my view, before vendors step into that role and make writing such applications as systematized an operation as, say, writing an application for Windows or Linux is today.

Yes, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are probably those vendors. Yes, the component providers probably hook into their platforms as the primary vehicle for monetizing their wares. However, without the same level of control over distribution that the old world enjoyed (not to mention the proliferation of open APIs and data formats), the big guys will have to coexist with the little guys.

The platform vendors will compete by providing the most compelling incentive to the component providers. In old world terms, the platform with the most ISVs will win. This bodes very well indeed for innovation in the new “Web 2.0″ world. Above all, the days of the platform vendors integrating all the components into the platform to the exclusion of independent providers have come and gone.

Thankfully.

David Berlind: “[P]icture a world where, instead of carrying a notebook computer with you everywhere you go, and instead of having power-drinking desktops in every corner of your house, all you have is a USB key that you take from one dirt cheap thin client to another. On that key is not just all of your personal data (that is stored in the cloud but replicated to your USB key for offline usage), but perhaps a small Web server and some applications, both of which are thin-client friendly.”

I’m in complete agreement that the thin client/web application computing model is the wave of the future, and that the days of the fat client as the primary mechanism for monetizing software are numbered. However, I don’t buy into the notion that software-as-a-service displaces the traditional fat client entirely, for one very simple reason: It’s going to be a while yet before we have truly ubiquitous network connectivity.

Sure, perhaps if you live in the San Francisco Bay area or in a similarly technology centric place, it’s easy to buy into the notion that it won’t be long before we’ll all be connected all the time. However, we can’t lose sight of the fact that a vast majority of the population doesn’t live in a world where technology billboards dominate the morning commute. Heck, my cell phone doesn’t even work when I visit my grandfather in rural Indiana—the notion of an omnipresent wifi fabric built from community hotspots is a long way off there, to put it mildly.

And even when we do get to the day when we have ubiquitous connectivity, we’ll still want caching for optimization and replication to eliminate the single point of failure problem, not to mention the ability to retain control over our own digital lives. So, I view the thin vs. fat client juxtaposition as being not so much about user experience—AJAX has shown us that remarkably good user interfaces can be built on the web. It’ll be more about caching and data replication, two very important considerations in any distributed system. I think most people are missing that. David, as usual, appears to get it.

My prediction: Applications will increasingly move to the web, so you’ll be able to get to your data anytime, anywhere, and from any connected device. No surprise there. But the majority of the time, when you’re using “your” client device (whether it’s a PC in your home or office or a handheld device or something that lives on a USB key and securely attaches to the network via some device that’s outside of your administrative control), you’ll still primarily interact with the web through a fat client of some sort.

To be sure, the fat clients of the future will look a lot different from the fat clients of today. Hint: “Fat client” doesn’t have to mean “self-administered”. Perhaps the fat clients of the future are delivered on demand or via independently developed components that integrate into some larger framework. Perhaps it’s as simple as running a web server locally. But the fat client in whatever form will still be the primary interface the vast majority of the time. That’s why I don’t buy for a minute that Web 2.0 is yet another death knell for Microsoft. They’ve obviously got a great fat client story, and in case you haven’t noticed, they’ve just woken up to what’s going on around them.

By the way, this is the area where I think Linux on the desktop could have the biggest impact—it won’t be about who has the better desktop or who can replicate the popular fat client applications of today in open source. It’ll be about who can mold Linux into the fat client framework of the future, seamlessly integrated with applications and services delivered via the web but open. If I were Microsoft’s competitors in this space, namely Google and Yahoo, I’d be spending a lot of time thinking about this. In today’s fat client world, Microsoft is between them and their customers more often than not, and if the past is any indication, they’ll be able to use this position to tremendous advantage.

Here’s a really nifty, Ajaxian alternative interface to del.icio.us, a fantastic service in almost all respects, but one whose UI leaves a bit to be desired if you ask me. Even niftier is how the thing is implemented: It’s all done on the client side using a bookmarklet that overwrites the standard HTML page and uses XMLHTTPRequest to populate a richer version, a bit like Greasemonkey on steroids. The dependence on the bookmarklet is a nuisance, but the result is well worth it. (Via LifeHacker.)

Mark Fletcher: “One of the many great things about running a web service are the users. A passionate user is one of your greatest assets. […] By getting your service launched as quickly as possible, you’ll get exposure to this wonderful resource sooner.”

This is frickin’ amazing.

Dave Winer: “A few weeks ago a venture capitalist said we’re in the first inning of RSS. I said that’s wishful thinking, the first inning was six years ago. He asked what inning are we in? I said it’s the inning when the big guys swoop in and take markets from the little guys, with lightning speed. The VCs invested too late in this market. They could learn the lesson, you have to risk to earn the reward. The time to build is before the big dudes see it. Way before.”

Derek Powazek (via the O’Reilly Radar): “[Using Google Maps to explain Ajax is] like using a race car to explain what an engine is. It’s in there, sure, but wow look at it go!”

Great overview of how Ajax works at a very high level. I, like many, have invariably used Google Maps to explain Ajax, but I don’t think I realized that this explanation leaves so much out until I read this.

eWEEK: “By moving its sponsored listings into feeds, Google wants to remove a common fear among some publishers that they will lose advertising revenue as readers subscribe to feeds rather than reading content on Web sites, said Shuman Ghosemajumder, business product manager for AdSense.” Cool. See also: RSS: to advertise or not to advertise?

Edd Dumbill: “As I say increasingly often to anybody who has the misfortune to be listening, we’re living in the most exciting times in web and computing technology yet. It’s messy, it’s fast, it’s fun, and it often gives me a headache.”

Jeremy Zawodny: “I hope nobody ever tries to launch a serious on-line business named ‘Click Here.’ They’d never make it onto the first page [of search engine results]!” Click here to read more. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.. :-))