Google’s strategy has a hint of the “cool” factor, where the attempt is to make technology seem easy, accessible and hassle free (just pressing a few buttons is all it takes) while MS’s approach has to keep technology behind the IT department’s forbidding walls, behind which obscure tech language is used.

The substantial amount of support required by Microsoft tools will probably be offset by concerns relating to where the information is stored and instincts of self-preservation by most corporate IT departments.

As for the corrections, thanks. I’m making them in the entry right now

The idea that the browser would become the OS? That Andreessen quote tells you how old it is. Kind of like my predicting “a big stock market crash” in 1995. No one would be calling me a genius. And the browser OS thing still hasn’t happened _yet_.

Back then I knew the “browser OS” hype was a pipe dream for technical reasons. Networks didn’t have the capcity or the reliability. More importantly, it is a lot harder to do something on two computers with a big WAN in between, than to do it on one computer. Or in business terms it will cost a lot more, and not work as well. To a developer, writing a word processor this way sounds like the kind of idea only an old man in a suit could dream up.

But the “Browser OS” term only sucks because it oversimplifies. There’s just a trend towards more complex client-server interactions in general. I think, because they’re becoming _possible_. Vastly stable, incredibly fast networks and banks of commodity servers are a good thing.

Today Ajax and Flash have, in fits and starts, finally created what looks like a (barely) usable platform for developing on them, doing what Java had tried and failed to do. Note that Java failed for very specific, technical reasons – such as JVM startup time on 1990’s hardware. Though, I shouldn’t forget to give Microsoft’s successful sabotage attempt credit as well.

Ajax is not new. People have been trying to design these platforms forever. Check out the NeWS framework (actually developed by long time “network computer” enthusiast James Gosling). Wikipedia has a good writeup (that I swear I didn’t edit before citing). It seems clear Google is committed to evolving Ajax as a platform the way Sun has with Java. Their success so far is impossible to argue.

The funny part is that I was wrong about web-based word processors. My revelation happened on the Obama campaign. Google docs was all they used. And it would have been impossible to run that campaign without it. Hundreds of thousands of strangers, with different computers and NO MEANINGFUL IT SUPPORT all flinging documents around and collaborating in real-time. That was simply impossible before Google.

My guess is that these wars are going to keep being won and lost on the little technical details.

For instance, it is _easier_ to write applications the way Google does it. Groove/Sharepoint requires that “MEANINGFUL IT SUPPORT” that Google docs does not. An expert will need to read manuals to install it. You will have to update it and patch it. For the percentage of admins who mess that up, it will go down and/or lose data. It will be expensive. It will fail with firewalls and break when you upgrade to Service Pack N. This may be exactly Microsoft will succeed in holding on to the enterprise for a long time to come. Big corporate IT departments love all that bullshit.

Being free and open (or not) will contribute heavily. The marketplace has started to learn that lesson. We know who does that better.

But you raise a big question: how many businesses will let their Secret Documents go onto a 3rd party’s servers? I actually have no idea. Maybe everyone will be afraid of google’s all seeing eye. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be. On the other hand, how many companies hire “3rd party” bulk document shredders?

Oh, also, two nitpicks:

When you say “This could be seen as something not completely unlike the task manager in windows, which doles out memory and CPU power to each of the applications it deals with and orchestrate who gets what.” I would put it slightly differently, “…not completely unlike the way an operating system (or kernel, etc) doles out memory and CPU power…”

Also, I think it’s “Google Gears” plural.