Web applications: wave of the future, or ripple?

[mdlbear]

Web 2.0 Conference celebrates Web app vision | InfoWorld | News | 2006-11-13 | By David L. Margulius

But one theme stood out: Web-based apps and services have become serious business, and everyone’s scrambling to provide platforms to deliver them.

“This is a fundamental architectural shift,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt of the massive server farms necessitated by maturing Web development and delivery stacks. “The network is always going to be around; … the [local] disk will be optional.” He asserted that packaged applications can’t possibly compete against Web-based apps long-term because “the datacenter is running 7-by-24, it has to be better. It can’t break.”

I disagree completely with this idea. The network is not ubiquitous -- it would cost me an extra $200/month to allow everyone in my family unlimited net access through their cell phones. No way. Even with a T1 connection here at work, it takes three days to mirror a new architecture from the Debian repository.

And one of my coworkers carries Wikipedia around in an SD card on his Treo. All of it. A 2GB SD card is $40 at Fry's today.

Google's data center may be running 24*7, but LJ's certainly isn't, and neither is my net connection.

Opinions?

Comments

[mneme]

It's an interesting question.

Clearly, some stuff needs to be local or close-to-local -- when you get down to it, the light-speed lag proved that. And in the forseeable future, that's not going away.

That said, for desktop, end-user machines, there are a huge number of hurdles with the traditional "download, configure, install" approach which are solved or partially solved by a move to a network-computing or partial network computing approach -- not merely the user-difficulty of installation, but machine/os mobility, data redundancy, machine transparency (wouldn't it be nice to be able to access the same data on your phone/palm/desktop as your laptop, -without- having to do extra magic?), etc. Those problems aren't going away, and they have an effect on power users as well as non-technical end-users.

I'm guessing that over time, we'll see applications and data migrating into the network -- but in a fashion that allows local caching, storage, and backup. Open OOOword on your own box, and it will come up instantly, running from the local cache -- open it up with your credentials on a buddy's box, and it will still open, with your usual UI preferences and settings, but it might take a few minutes to download your settings and the application.

[mdlbear]

It's possible, but only if we get some kind of universal client that everyone's apps can run in. The browser and Javascript come closest, and they're nowhere near adequate. Maybe Java could do the job; it was heading in that direction before Sun ran it off the road and into the bushes.

And you'd have to either get rid of Microsoft or let it take over the world. The first is unlikely, and the second is highly undesirable.