Brace Yourself for Web Wars

That's it, RichardRollTide!  The fact that they can dominate the market has resulted in their ignoring how the market was formed, which is pointed out in the blog.

The reality is that they need to better serve the customer's needs and interests, not just further consolidate their gains.  I know that is the purpose of business.  But I also know that that is how companies lose business.

In this economy, it invites a better solution that will truly address the customer's problems.  The company that puts that together will make true gains. 

I agree with O'Reilly. 

DHagar

We as consumers hate to have tradeoffs. However, that's how it is in today's tech society. Mac vs. PC, Bing vs. Google, and Apple vs. Every company that makes a phone are all examples of where one has to make a choice and basically is forced to make tradeoffs and weight what his/her own preferences are against those.

About the comment of making products to compete with companies instead of what consumers want, he is half right. Companies must create products that satisfy a customer demand. However, if your target customer demand is already being satisfied by another company, you must make a product to compete with that company as well. I mean, can't we assume that if a company makes a product to compete against another company that the product is meeting some consumer's demand? The tipping point is on who's product is better.

Example: If you need widgets and already have that need met by one company, then I better have a better widget or you're not going to waste time and effort switching to my widget.

Once again,  we are seeing that suppliers of goods and services will circle their wagons and battle for fief ownership as long as their customers allow it. Only a severe market pushback will stop the self-promoting market behavior.

Business as usual can be said of these guys you refer to when they growl in lectures, meetings etc. They are just following the script of their public relations advisers who tell them to "create" or better "to fabricate" this perception of an ongoing war in the Web. The big guys, be them organizations or people, need a war to be just that, big and to justify their big budgets. If there's no war, their bigness is a waste of energy.

The real big guy here, the Honcho, the Big Kahuna, is the Web, whatever it is. And whatever it is, the Web is US. Its something new and because of that, its under development. Even though ARPANET is more or less 50 years old (a classic one generation timeframe, a generation being 40 years), ARPANET is not the Web. The Web as we know it, is... maybe in its teens. Even though its composed of the most diverse aggregation of disimil characters in human history, the aggregate experience of the Web's existence is that of a high school student. That is, the mindspace of the Web is just begining to be defined.

So there's no war in effecct. Maybe the intent of a war by a group of bullies. Remeber AOL, et al? Where are they?

Let's not get confused by paranoia generated by media advisors looking to create a niche to their employers. The real sustantive issues in the Web are not those of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. The real sustantive issues in the Web is that of the fundamental guarantee to remain open and not to become a slave economy. That no single entity or group of entities can dictate the openness of the Web. And presently no one can claim to have started a war on that because no one, even Google or Microsoft has such control. In fact, the present state of affairs is that even them are loosing their bigness and new players are "under construction".

We as the Web must not act as if under a war because some guy says so. We have to impose our own intent of peace and our own weight for a peaceful Internet Evolution.

At one time you had Google, Lycos, etc as web search engines and from my past experience they did good jobs for the purpose.  Also ask.com had another approach to searching the web in the form of questions and answers.  Now we have MS’ Bing which reminds me of a combination of Google and Ask.com.  But they are in fact search engines. 

From a penetration point of view Google now has more applications out there and in the form of creating documents, spread sheets, and so on.  They like many others seem to be doing this to carve up Microsoft’s pie.  There are also the free software type applications which have multiple applications also available.  The only concern I have is that as they evolve the applications will not communicate with one another.   

From my perspective as users I would expect any application word processing function should be able to be read by any other application of a like type.  But alas I do not think it will turn out that way……. 

This is one reason most businesses pick a specific system, MS, Linux, etc because they want to remain consistent within the organization.  The best way to do that is do not go into the expense of one system becoming common with another system, just everyone use the same system.  In this application I believe we’ll see more xml type applications to allow files to move from one system to another in a ‘neutral’ format. 

With various companies offering their systems and features does not have to turn into a war but allow through neutral formats compatibility with various other systems.  In the global economies it will be better if the systems can share the basic application data. Make 'common data' not  'War'.

I enjoyed Daily Tech's article on Google's Chrome Browser system this morning.

their approach depreciates the old PC model that we are accoustomed to, offering instead a design based on speed, simplicity, and security.

this is much more along the line of what many customers will want.

the security model is along the line of what we would expect from Charlie Miller's comments from CanSecWest, earlier:*

" no app is trusted;  Each app is run in its own sandbox. so the potential for system compromise is dramatically reduced. "

the DT editor is skeptical, saying "While that seems unlikely", I beg to differ, noting that Google is taking the correct approach to security.

I would add that [IMHO, naturally] Google's marketing is very sharp on this particular line of development. The SS Microsoft will start taking on water when this hits.

*search the article for his comments on Chrome

If we look back in the history of mankind we see this evolution: Wars ->Space race that evolved into Space Wars -> Web Wars. Is a real Star Wars next? 

New powers like Microsoft, Apple, Google or Facebook are not different. They come to show that mankind hasn't learned the lesson. They come to show that power comes first and users come second. 

They should be thinking of the best way to work together in a search for serving and benefiting the user instead of creating web conflict. Wouldn't this be wiser? 

-Susan

has the internet seen last days of its evolution? would it be all about clashes between the giant while the poor internet users look on helplessly? I thought internet was a place where you could unleash your creative prowess without siding with any "platform". In todays troubled times internet is the only source that transcends all borders, race,nationality etc. It should remain that way. A window which lets in fresh air for all.

Freeware, Freemium, Opensource, Free Content....we thought the party would never end.  Is there a hostorical precedent for socialism working on a grand scale? is that not what the "free" web is meant to be? of course the dirty little secret of "free" is that someone ultimately has to be make it free, which simply means they absorb the cost.  the world is filled with people, who formed collectives, which became countries with borders.  why should the web defy all that is inherenlty instinctual within mankind?  we may like to believe that we can evolve at the speed of a redbull-charged Uber Coder, but, alas, we are simply human beings, who have these hardwired instincts that drive us to do silly things like: hunt & gather, seek shelter, and protect ourselves, and oh yeah, procreate.  what digital things have enabled is an illusion that we have evolved much faster than we actually have, but, Instinctual-reversion, is a powerful force, and can only be hedged for so long.  Then, we start hunting and gathering again.  and when we have hunted and gathered, we create little piles of the things we have(hunted and gathered), and then we protect them from "hunter-gatherer" Aggregators. I suppose maybe the Vikings were an early example of this.  eventually, there was of course a bit less marauding, and a bit more diplomacy, and we thought of things like Federations.  Hmmmm, the Federated Wide Web.  with toll-booths and everything.  fww.huntergather.com