[UFO Chicago] "Microsoft is dead"

[Brian Sobolak]

sten wrote:
> Brian Sobolak wrote:
>> Will the culture of sharing code
>> die when you no longer have to compile & install code on your
>> machine--it's just a service in the cloud instead?
> 
> Not to get all ESR, but if we hand over control of all our data to 
> Google, Yahoo, and the other "web 2.0" players, then aren't we 
> completely screwed? What if Google burps and Brian's spreadsheet goes 
> into the bitbucket? How is having your data locked away in Google's 
> colos any better than having it in a proprietary MS Office-only format?

That's a fair argument, and one I've considered and decided to make
peace with.

The key difference was when I noticed Gmail allowed POP access to your
email stored on their servers.  This was substantially different from my
experiences with most other "free" email services, and one that made
feel comfortable that I could retrieve my data if this seemed like a
possibility.

> I'm all about AJAX- I've got Roundcube, Scuttle, Gregarius and TaskFreak 
> all running on my own server, and I'd go nuts without them. But I don't 
> wanna outsource everything to Google any more than I do Microsoft. The 
> article is right, but I don't think its necessarily a good thing; meet 
> the new boss, same as the old boss.

It is a concern that Google dominates so much of the landscape.  But the
nature of the game has clearly changed -- Google has APIs for most of
their stuff and is giving the AJAX toolkit away.  That's substantially
different from the M$ model, so I haven't figured out the evil part just
yet.  But it certainly seems to be on its way.

brian