Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Inc.), “The O’Reilly Radar” keynote speech at Web 2.0 Expo New York 2009
- An ugly time in the web’s earliest years were times when there was browser wars.
- Tim O’Oreilly sees another “ugly time” coming. It may be another browser war.
- Talks about Rupert Murdoch thinking about removing their content from Google’s search results and only have Bing list his content.
- Seems as if there’s always someone or some company that is at war with the web.
- Takes a look at cloud computing. Services like Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure and Google App Engine.
- He makes the point that the cloud computing services listed above is not the “web’s platform”, but instead it’s “Amazon’s Platform” or “Microsoft’s Platform” or “Google’s Platform” which lends him to think this is a another sign of a platform war going on.
- There’s always a counter reaction from open source groups like RedHat and their Delta Cloud for open API’s which makes it easy to incorporate all three.
- Speaks about the phone wars and how companies like Apple and Google have phones which only allows certain kinds of apps to run on their phones, etc.
- Apple for example, is playing by different rules. It’s not an open system like the web.
- Apple decdides who gets to get their application listed, what that iphone app can do, when does it infringe on Apple’s business? This isn’t the way the web works.
Web 2.0
- You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means!
- Tim O’Reilly calls web 2.0: “Building an Internet Operating System”
Web 2.0 Principles:
- Data is the Intel inside of the next generation of applications.
The Internet Operating System:
It’s subsystems are databases of:
- People
- Places
- Things
- Prices
- Documents
- Images
- Sounds
- Relationships
- Trust metrics
- …
And services that help people use them:
- Search
- Payment
- Matching and recognition
- …
- Talks about Google’s Android application “Turn by Turn” navigation. Says this is not something that could be built on a phone, but only on the web because it relies on vast databases and numerous cloud databases.
Do We See The Beginning of a Showdown Between Apple and Google?
- Apple says to Google: you can’t run Google voice on the iPhone.
- Google says to Apple: the new Google maps, with free turn by turn directions is only available for Android devices.
- Talks about Bill Gurley’s post about these kinds of web wars. See Bill’s post here: http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-“less-than-free”-business-model/
- Says there are services in which Google can only provide for free. There’s services that only Facebook can provide for free. There are services that only Apple can provide for free and so on…
- What he’s worried about is when these companies try and leverage this.
If the Internet is going to become an operating systems, with these interoperable data services are they used for leverage to create “One Ring to Rule Them All?” or are they going to be used in the style we’ve always seen with the Internet?
- In which small peices are loosely joined?
- In which the world is interoperable?
- In which we use the best of breed of one player and the best of breed from another to bring together a new kind of application that doesn’t belong to any one of us but has to do with the free movement of users and information across the web?
- Talks about Brady Forrest’s blog post where he suggests some things Google might be able to do with their Turn by Turn Android app. See Brady’s post here: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/navigating-the-future-take-me.html
- About Brady’s post: Tim O’Reilly makes the point that with some of Brady’s suggestions, Google can do some all by themselves and some Google could enlist the help of others. This would eliminate the “One Ring to Rule Them All” as Google would be incorporating other apps and technologies so if a person buys an Android based phone, the user doesn’t just have to stay within Google’s offerings in applications and the like.
Tim O’Reilly’s Advice To Google:
Be Rigirous In Making Sure That The Users Benefits:
- Free turn by Turn: Big user win.
- Free speech recognition: Big User Win.
- Automated translation: Big user win.
- Free docs and spreadsheets: Big user win.
- Face recognition: Big user win.
- Google book search: Big user win.
When You Forget To Be Rigirous In Making Sure That The Users Benefits: You Lose.
Have a look at Google’s failures and they tend to be about competitiveness:
- Froogle: Google’s attempt to eat Amazon’s lunch with no unique benefit to users.
- Google Checkout: Google’s attempt to eat PayPal’s lunch with no unique benefit to users.
- Google Knol: Google’s attempt to eat Wikipedia’s lunch with no unique benefit to users.
- Google Profiles: Google’s attempt to eat Facebook’s lunch with no unique benefit to users.
Great Advice From Jeff Jarvis:
“Do what you do best and link to the rest.”
- OpenID, Facebook API, Twitter API and more are opening up the web and redefining how people register and login to websites.
- Don’t just open up because you’re the underdog. Example: Microsoft embracing open source stuff and such because Google is the clear winner.
- Mark Twain said “Do the right thing. You will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
- We should really “get out there” and figure out what really is the right thing.
- Talks about John Borthwick’s blog post “Lines in the Sand” http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2009/10/30/lines-in-the-sand/
The Robust Principle:
“TCP implementations should follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.”
I think Tim O’Reilly has a great point about the future of the Internet in that we should all work together to make it beneficial for all of us.
What do you think?
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