October 6th, 2005
Web 2 Oh
Ray Ozzie and Jonathan Schwartz are channeling the same line about Photoshop not being built on AJAX. But Schwartz is disingeneous at best when he suggests there is no need for an AJAX-based Office replacement. In fact, that’s exactly what I want, a calendar app, an RSS hub, and a wireless router (hello Apple.) Last night at dinner Ozzie got about half way to the mindset where this model fully takes over. He’s got big reasons to bet on entropy and what he calls the combination of software and services, but Google and Skype already have my business. It’s my take that the audience is in no mood for financing pragmatic change management on the backs of outmoded business models, whether they be in the media or the tech platform community. Weblogs’ AOL buy is the latest gong. As Schwartz said this morning, distribution is everything. And I will personally bet Jonathan all my Sun stock (none) that the JVM/toolbar will soon push the next set of Office bits down to my Firefox client. Or I’ll go elsewhere.
