Gee, think something has been going on at Microsoft lately? Naw, just a sea change. Breaking news earlier today (following my standard let the new sit before I blog it policy) was the release of by Dave Winer of internal e-mails from Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie. Mark Evans of the National Post (Canada) had some great commentary first thing (the benefit of being on the East Coast) and Scoble just gushed his enthusiasm … which is a really good sign.
So, what’s the fuss about? Essentially Microsoft is embracing “Web 2.0″ and it seems like the age of giant super apps is drawing to a close. Ray Ozzie recognizes that the small, light app is key. That extensible applications like Skype and Google Earth and Flickr are winning the day. Why? Because they are agile. Rapidly deployed. Slick. Ray even said that the days of the complex app are over. They suck up too much dev time.
I think this is truly the watershed moment of 2005. I think this is similar to the announcement of IE getting serious attention. Netscape ruled the day. No one thought the first versions of IE were anything but dreck. Now. Now IE is top of the heap. It’s taken years for Netscape to come back to a point where they aren’t Netwho? But Microsoft saw the writing on the walls with Firefox. Small, light, extensible app. Doesn’t try to do everything. Let individuals and other companies go beyond the core functions.
Clearly Microsoft is etting on the .Net and related technologies horse. AJAX and browser-based applications are going to be more and more common. How about a “light” version of Word that does pretty much just the core stuff, but you can add on other functions like outlining or something?
Yeah, we’re going to look back at this next year and think that this was a big moment. Either that or we’re going to think we were all nuts.
Powered By Qumana
