Web Rules, Dinosaurs Drool
The Royal Pingdom is a weblog that I enjoy reading on a regular basis. For some reason, even when I’ve been un-subscribing from any blogs related to web tech, I still look forward to getting regular updates from them. Part of the reason, no doubt, is that they put a unique spin on topics that most bloggers either already have written about, or haven’t even had enter their mind.
An article that they wrote today is on a topic that has really been interesting me the last few months. With a nice little graph and their usual stunning display of knowledge of the interwebs, they’ve given us a good image of what our computers are looking like these days; concluding that our most popular applications are ancient when considering the youth of the web. Two big examples: Microsoft Word (which dominates it’s market) has been around for 27 years and Photoshop (which IS it’s market) has been in use for 22!
Curiosity is engaged, though, when we look at the latest four applications (on their list) that have been developed for our computers; Safari, Skype, Firefox and Chrome. What do these four have in common?
They’re all tied intimately to the internet, and they’re all huge.
No doubt, Safari doesn’t have as great a market share as it once believed it would (it’s already been passed up by the new kid Chrome). But when you look at the numbers of users for each of these, you’ll stand back amazed at how far they’ve come. Logging into Skype just now, I can see that there are 22 million other people logged in, and Firefox is at 1.3 billion downloads of their software (since 2004)
Take a look at usage statistics for web applications and you’ll see a growing trend: everyone is moving to the web. With the arrival of Google Docs, Facebook, Aviary, Dropbox, Twitter, Picasa and YouTube we see more and more people moving their lives completely onto the web. I personally use my desktop only as a means to store files temporarily until I either delete them or move them to an online backup source somewhere (no doubt to various places).
Here’s a list of what some software and hardware developers have been doing lately to reflect this shift:
Palm
[Founded: 1992]
Throughout the ‘90s, Palm became a company that people everywhere were in love with. They developed good products (Palm Pilot) that were the iPhones of their time (and in fact, provided a good starting point for later companies to work with). In 2009, the Palm Pre was released to Sprint customers which promised an impressive webOS with plenty of features to get people connected to the internet (and to give the company the boost they needed to stay afloat). I’m using the Pre myself, and have everything synced between my Google, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.
Microsoft
[Founded 1975]
Microsoft is a name known by millions (billions?) around the world as a company that has provided a computer system that people could use on a regular basis for whatever reason they might think of. It still holds a steady grip on a huge percentage of the market, but in the last decade has started to look a bit moldy on the edges as core components of their systems were compared to the advances by the competition.
To get back on track, Microsoft has been re-ordering themselves and moving more and more to the web. By the Holiday Season of 2010, they’ll be releasing their new Windows 7 Phone, which shows off some really cool web connectivity features. They’re in talks with Yahoo about powering their search service with Bing (released in 2009) and they’re developing a Google Docs and Zoho competitor by bringing Office 2010 online for customers to use (and I’m sure you’ve heard of the Windows Live services?). They’ve seen what kind of power the internet can bring them through the success of Xbox Live, and now they’re moving full-force into the game.
Apple
[Founded 1976]
Apple has been around almost as long as Microsoft has, and through it’s roller-coaster ride of success and failures, it is beginning again to build a name for itself. This company is very similar to Palm (and very unlike Microsoft) in that it is both a hardware and a software company. This may actually be one reason why they’ve had some difficulty moving more of their services to the web (remember the MobileMe disaster?) but with recent updates that may be changing.
The iPhone and iPad are boasting net connectivity, and using app developers to help bring more people over to their side. With iTunes, iBooks and yes, (an improved) MobileMe, they’re really starting to makes some leaps with the power provided by the web. And of course, they’ve made a browser that isn’t too shabby either (Safari).
[Founded 1998]
A lot of times when thinking about Google, we like to put it in the same category as the above companies. After all, these days they are developing software (Google Chrome, Picasa, etc.), operating systems (ChromeOS and Android), mobile devices (Nexus One) and of course are giving us a load of online applications that are taking us from our desktops to the web browser.
The difference between this company and the others, though, is that it isn’t a newcomer to the web – it IS the web. The others are trying to catch up with them in this race, and unfortunately (for them) because of the position of Google, they cannot do anything but be required to connect to Google apps using their own systems (Examples: Palm Sync, Official iPhone Apps, various Microsoft software). I suppose they can choose not to connect to Google if they want to… but if they do, they lose.
The End of the Age
In the end, Pingdom said it perfectly. The web is quickly becoming the “proverbial meteorite that finally wipes out the domination of the old desktop application dinosaurs.” And it’s a good thing, too. I look forward to the day when phone service providers are actually global wi-fi providers, when computers are just a browser linking to secure servers, and when everything that I do online is synced to a single location for easy browsing later. It may be the end of the (desktop application) world, but just as the loss of the dinosaurs gave way to the evolution of mammals into the beings we are today, so the extinction of these ‘dinosaurs’ will give us a way into an awesome future.
Interesting thoughts, but I have a bone to pick… You said “I suppose they can choose not to connect to Google if they want to… but if they do, they lose.” however, Fox looks like it's going to go this way, and the Wall Street Journal already has made significant money by not allowing people to access their content without a subscription…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10461255-93.html
I believe that is a slightly different situation from what I am noting above. In the case of Wall Street Journal being behind a pay-wall, WSJ is the service being provided that people want, and they can get to that service by going around Google and straight to the source. One may argue that WSJ is hurting from this move, but that's on them, not on Google. Simply put, Google was not keeping WSJ from getting visitors, WSJ was choosing to do so.
With the Apple/gVoice debacle, though, Apple made it clear that they did not want to give any users access to gVoice applications (or any third-party apps that hooked into the system). They were blocking all of their users from getting to the popular web application (Google wasn't blocking app developers from connecting to their system, as WSJ is doing above). When Google saw what was happening, they took a logical step to correct the problem, and moved the app to the browser (and even were opened up to Pal users in the process).
In both cases, Google has set the rules, and the other companies are either willfully or are being forced to play along with those rules. WSJ chose not to work with Google's service – they are losing. Apple chose not to allow gVoice Apps – they lost.
What I was trying to say is that the Wall Street Journal doesn't get indexed anymore by Google. Now Fox is threatening Google with a lawsuit to keep their info out of Google. I guess it's one way a company is standing up to Google and telling them that they don't make the rules. Now I don't know if it will be successful or not, but the Wall Street Journal has been a success so far…
Certainly, this is true. It seems that Google has already stated that they don't mind not indexing a website's articles (hasn't fox heard of no-index?). Still, though, Google does make the rules in this case. Fox may be choosing to make their own rules, but I doubt it will help them very much (especially since they don't have a pay-wall like WSJ).
But even when looking at WSJ, they seem to be doing pretty well (which is why they've probably kept the pay-wall up). But let's say that they did allow Google to index their pages – how many more visitors would they get through the search giant? How much more would that help them with gaining visitors?
I'm not saying that they should (if anything, I think they're doing the right thing). But as far as being found on the web, Google is where it's all at.