The Power Of Web Apps Examined

I trek over to Slate.com most evenings, where usually there is published a headline or two I find interesting enough to click through to. Scarce, however, are there pieces to do with the goings on in the technology world. Stuff about various Washingtonians and watchers of those Washingtonians crops up on the site with great frequency, and things generally classifiable as “miscellaneous” (not by Slate, but by the average reader) tend to take up most of the front page’s remaining space. Sure, one only need mouse over one of the tabs near the upper left side of the window to glance at pieces to do with circuits and such, but requiring this of readers means those articles don’t get read by the majority of the site’s visitors.

Yesterday was a unique one, though. Stationed in the bar below the main headlines was a snippet that read: “The new Google product that could augur the death of Microsoft.” The link led to an article written by a Slate regular, Harry McCracken.

While I was immediately skeptical about what was being posited in that brief line, I clicked anyhow. Why not? I had a few minutes to kill.

What followed were a number of paragraphs on Google Gears (in particular, the author’s experience with the Gears-compatible Remember The Milk, a browser-based to-do list manager), and how the innovation – along with those developed by Adobe and Mozilla – could very well give many, many millions of people reason to forget their loyalty to Microsoft and adopt items a bit fresher, considerably lighter, and a lot more free (as in beer). In short, Google, along with other Web 2.0 development houses, may be the collective death knell of the Redmond machine. Not totally, of course, but, you know, enough to humble Gates and get Ballmer to keep his tongue in his mouth.

If one were to only read the first page of McCracken’s argument, one would likely come away thinking the mind that wrote it allowed naivety to commandeer the keyboard, which is why it’s worth taking in the article whole. Because after you click ‘Next’, the picture he painted in the first few hundred words, which he professes may come off as perhaps a bit “overly enthusiastic,” gets its edges beveled, and, you’re more likely than not to begin to really agree with the guy by the time he wraps it all up.

He mentions the need for Web 2.0 products formulated with the online/offline hybrid model (like Remember The Milk, Google Reader, etc.) to mature, showcase a lot more features, and get some quality time with the polishing cloth. Sounds about right.

Overall, however, and especially in closing, McCracken hits it square on the nail. He argues:

“Long term…cheap, pervasive, reliable broadband would make technologies like Gears superfluous. That day will come…though I don’t think it’s arriving all that soon. So, right now, there’s unquestionably a need for this stuff. If nothing else, it’ll be entertaining to see how old-line software purveyors [Microsoft, etc.] react. Typically for Google its spin on Gears is altruistic—the company stresses that it's an open-source product that it hopes many services will embrace. That it's also a way to mess with Microsoft's head may be purely coincidental. But if Google isn't working furiously to bring offline capabilities to everything from Gmail to Google Spreadsheets, I'd be flabbergasted. And bummed out. As a guy who endures more than his share of six-hour plane flights, I can't wait until I can use all my favorite Web services sans Web.”

Well said. Ditto, too. I just wish “that day” would come soon. The gap between online and offline will close eventually. Give it 5, maybe 10 years just to be safe. As for the Google Apps suite, I expect the company to make them nearly as useful offline as they are online by 2010. Good enough, by the way, for most to replace Word, Excel and the rest if need be.