Friday, June 22, 2012

WebOS


This post is not so far forward thinking as my other posts. It builds on practical ideas that are already in development.

In the next 5 years (near future, don't hold me to the exact date), we will have a converging web operating system that will allow users to drag-n-drop apps from one website to another. This exchange of drag-n-drop apps will allow developers to build websites in a sense, but this won't be any different from customizing your operating system. We won't really be building websites, we will be exchanging web applications. Some of these applications will be commercial in nature and others will be free.

However, the real success of the near future internet will be the pooling of common resources, that are accessible to all web applications. As virtual operating systems share common resources so will web operating systems. At the backbone of a modern web operating system will be (or should be) the organization of data in open online databases that are freely accessible via a REST api.

In this new WebOS web-app world - Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and Google will be dominate players. If Yahoo! doesn't close their business, they could have a lot of success in the WebOS app market.

Google has tried to implement a Google operating system on chrome notebooks. Google alone will probably not be efficient as a uni-polar power to implement a global adaption of WebOS. Microsoft could have had this successor operating system, but they threw in the towel a long-time ago. The new operating system is built on web tools; an area where Microsoft hasn't adapted well.  Currently, Apple is best adapted to lead this change to WebOS - due to their operating system, app market, and recent focus on what Google does. However, Apple focuses more on design and user-experience and less on standards. The real value, however, as I mentioned is in the commonly shared web databases, an area that is best designated for Oracle and perhaps IBM.

I am not sure how this will all play out; just a best-guess analysis from my current perceptions. In the next few years the corporate playing field might completely change; but, the facets suggest that the internet is become a WebOS.

6/22/2012 - Timothy F. Montague