Google Gazes at Sun Dribble, where's the Sizzle?
October 5th, 2005 by Adam Cuothe
It was on every IT-related web site today, the shining promise of a blossoming net scrotum, which would lift web searchers to the next level of connectedness and force Bill to install some solar heating panels at the Gates’s pad. But it didn’t (and I tend to like Googlestuff) . Everyone speculated on a Google/Sun/OpenOffice.org related Web-based office app. Everyone thought that was the big announcement and well, it was just barely hinted at as a maybe sort of something kinda’ remotely related possibility. That’s a relief.
The Internet is great for a lot of stuff and maybe it has its place for many types of applications, but STOP WITH THE ON-LINE app hope already. Recreating an entire office suite as a Web-based app, really has dubious merit. It was accomplished rather well a long time ago (ThinkFree Office), it’s not new, and it sorta’ works well, but sorta’ not well enough when you can just download the fantastic, flyingfish of feature fidelity, OpenOffice.org. People keep saying, year after year, that all these apps ought to be web-based. But why? It’s not the best solution for everything. How many musicians are going find their specialized music composition, sound sculpting, and mixing apps to be tied to a flaky (even if it is up 99.9% of the time on Linux servers, the individual’s Internet connection may not be) web site? How about your company’s graphic designer? Is it useful to have a web-based Gimp (or Photoshop or Flash design app?) Not now… but “maybe someday” is often the response.
It’s not that straight-forward and most of the time pure and totalitarian web-based proponents (though unclear in what they want) they mostly are speaking about just business apps (so forget the musician mentioned above). One of the greatest things about the personal computer is how it opened up so many different new avenues of possibility, empowing individuals (in marketing-speak that is) for his/her own empowerment at creativity and DIYness (that’s do-it-yourselfness if you never experienced punk-rock in your youth). Desktop publish! Personal accounting! Logo design! (and that’s just part of what made-over the business world). How about the many other things available to the morays of personal eels (userland)? Print your own greeting card, remix your favourite song? What I’m saying is, the mandate to make everything web-based is based in great potential but in the unintelligent babblehead approach (à la Ellison NC-style) is possibly an even bigger threat to freedom if the computer manufacturers go along with that idea, than proprietary software was when the manufacturers agreed, both in writing and deed, to slather the MS joybulb.
Where is the Free Software Foundation? Because surely, a combination of network-only computers spreading forth to adopt the web-only based apps means users losing their freedom to do what they want with their computers. That is the true problem with pure Web apps. But that’s overstating it… that’s an overhyped dystopic vision that surely won’t happen. Though, I wouldn’t mind choice, innovative web-apps existing alongside full PC-installed ones, and that is where Google/Sun would be better served and can better serve you and I.
There’s a wealth of useful things I could envision doing with an OpenOffice.org suite, which seemlessly integrated its lookup, spellcheck, fact-checking, translation (CAT and trans memories), STORAGE, e-mail, mail-merge, RSS stat/analysis aggregation, real time business intelligence, and such with all the Google networked capabilities (gmail, search, etc.). That would be useful, and it would be more in-line with using personal computers to the best advantage and the web to an even better advantage, without eliminating personal freedom. Network computing is just a stupid idea by itself but integrated with the PC, it’s a great thing.
Google and Sun are smart. Their release caught a lot of attention, but gave dead dry ostrich bones to the pressanalyst jackals.
(PS: what’s with the Java and Google toolbar? Nothing exciting there, it’s a nothing announcement… all it will do is maybe generate a bit more traffic for Google, and Google buys a few more Sun servers, big deal–something else in the works but an ominous force stopped Schmidt/McNealy from talking)
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