Who will win the battle for control of the web?

incredible article

I'm a beginner to web design and have recently started attending courses and made use of a lynda.com subscription. All this talk of web standards can really make web design a complex topic and knowing which is going to be the most sustainable method is also increasingly difficult, this article has really helped answer some of my main concerns!

Thanks

By eliot94 on 26 Nov 2010

Omitted considerations

This is a good article about all the permutations for change to the Web and the major players, but omits a few critical factors.

One developer made mention to Internet Explorer 9 as if it was the only browser in existence, and the article writer(s) made no mention of position with Mozilla to HTML5, as it is formidable in user base, particularly outside USA.

The other aspect of significance is what is attitude of WEB/HTML5 adoption of the other industries/technology entities and three billion users not in North America.

It is important that such topic as Internet/Web be considered in a global context, and not from a myopic view of USA developers being the "only" determinator on the subject.

By weanderson on 27 Nov 2010

Battle.. for the... control! of theweb?

Facebook.

This article is redundant.

It's either Google or Facebook and you haven't even looked at Facebook.

Who greenlights this stuff?

Meh. If I was in a paper magazine I'd be dialling it in too. Do an RPS, make your own blog about what interests you, and do it before you get let go from your obsolescent job.

By Salvio on 27 Nov 2010

All four will lose, and the rest of us are better off for it

"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" - Lord Acton

It is fun to watch the fight of these four entities, in particular the way all four completely abuse standards and concepts of open-ness in computing. While Google and Apple are driven by single- and two-person personal short-sightedness and limitation, destining each to just miss with a monopoly within site out of blindness of a very miniscule percentage of overly-empowered leaders, Adobe and Microsoft suffer from "death by committee" and their soul-less clumsy meanderings look like what was once a robot of incredible power stuck in some un-needed clubbing of their left foot by their own right hand.

We are all better off that none will take over. All four are one-eyed, ultimately, brilliant at some things and downright stupid at others:
* Google has a search monopoly, and thus gets huge sums of money for nothing: between the natural excesses of this overachievement and a perverse and arbitrary philosophy around "open source" stamped on the company by one or two leaders, they manage to produce even worse software than Microsoft, on average. Yet they can still buy more monopolies and will, like Microsoft, keep going just like the Eveready bunny. They just aren't about to control themselves, let alone the Web, ever.
* Microsoft has an OS monopoly, which curses it just the way Google is cursed. Money for nothing is never a healthy thing. But Microsoft is Google 20 years on, they have already suffered for a long time, and while they have been beaten down long enough to avoid even thinking of taking over the Web; Silverlight was a last attempt at this. Rather they will work to cling to their OS monopoly a bit longer, and will fight to retain relevance to the Web at all: here the HTML5 efforts of Microsoft actually serve the common good. Obviously they were forced into this, just as Steve Jobs was forced to HTML5 support when Adobe Flash threatened to attain ubiquity.
* Apple has built some truly stunning technology, by superior design coupled with a philosophy of complete control. Steve Jobs makes a way better dictator than the Google/Microsoft leaders do/did, but even Steve is human. Human in that the level of respect for users is not all there: Blackberry and others have a great point that the iPad represents a dumbing-down of computing devices that can't possibly be justified. Steve's hatred of Flash is of mixed merit, but the claimed support for HTML5 and "standards" flies in the face of Apple/Jobs philosophy. Rather, here he is just like Microsoft, embracing SVG after 10 years of staunch rejection: Apple and Microsoft support "standards" if and when they see someone eating their lunch with non-standard technology, as Adobe has done with Flash. It is supreme irony that HTML5 presents the best way to bypass the App store: Steve's Waterloo is the commentary of Tim Berners Lee, for which no refutation is possible. No single technology company will conquer Apple, but their monopoly will be quelled by the combined efforts of the other three.
* Adobe owns the Flash monopoly, and has exploited it quite well. However, Adobe failed to embrace HTML5 initially and has been generally clumsy ever since the leaders cashed out. Still, their core rendition technology is second to none. They don't really know what they want to do as a company, and they keep changing direction, trying SaaS, trying to do Mobile, trying, trying... with mixed success. The Scene7, Omniture, and Day acquisitions were brilliant; yet like Microsoft they could afford to make really stupid mistakes as well. The kick in the butt from Steve when he kept Flash off the iPhone was very constructive, and we will see Adobe like Microsoft dusting off standards work from 2002, re-discovering their Creative Suite software, and finally gaining some real-world experience with server-based software, unless they shoot themselves in the foot.

Fun to watch.

By maxdunn on 28 Nov 2010

Open-source & Open-access...

...If you ain't giving me these, if you're business/marketing philosophy prevents either of these occurring, for any reason then you are a dinosaur walking.

Apple and in a related field, Nvidia, come to mind.

By fingerbob69 on 28 Nov 2010

DNS?

Its none of these companies - its those who control the DNS, upon which these companies rely. Without it, none of the aforementioned organisations would have a site at all.

By jbarnett on 29 Nov 2010