The Two Webs
Today the Web woke up to a real story about itself. Microsoft has put forward a powerful challenge to the notion that Google will steamroller Windows once it’s done with Office. Scott Guthrie made a strong case for developer extension of the rich browser, and Ray Ozzie cracked open the tiniest ray of hope that Office apps could conspire with Silverlight to create lock-in around the new Web runtime.
In the absence of competition, this could have been a frightening moment for those who dread a return to Redmond control. The short-term losers are Sun (the Java runtime, hello) and perhaps Adobe on the tools side. The mid-term threatened certainly include Apple and Salesforce, where their versions of rich and reach depend on a level browser playing field. What happens if we start lusting for that extra oomph of a Silverlight UI on a video-based information service we’ve somehow gotten addicted to?
I’m not so much concerned about the Windows experience; it’s the Mac runtime that really tunnels in, and the forthcoming Ruby on Rails support in the DLR, that bring the aggressive Charles Fitzgerald out to tell Farber why this one is inevitable once more. After all, as Ozzie implied in the Q&A with Arrington, what’s the competition? Twitter?
The engineering behind this is stunning. This is no Hailstorm, no crash dive all-hands-on-deck save the cheerleader, save the company drive from the Gates playbook. This is a Microsoft 3.0 iteration, with Visual Studio and Firefox tied at the waist. This is both the good news and the bad news, for either the Web or Microsoft but one not the other. In this new alignment, Google has to make a decision quickly–to release the Firefox persistence engine now. Ballmer’s dismissal of Google Apps is the one shrill note in this broad masterstroke of a rollout:
A: They’ve come out with what I might call — what’s the politically correct way of saying it? — they’ve come out with some of the lowest functionality, lowest capability applications of all time. (Laughter.)
I’m not one to remotely dismiss Ballmer, but he’s speaking into my wheelhouse and missing the big boat. I just upgraded to Firefox 2.0 after months of biding; all of a sudden spellcheck is working inside Wordpress without a plug-in. When I reboot unexpectedly, my tabs are auto-restored; when I click to close each individual tab, the focus shifts back to the tab that launched the new page (Google Reader impact.) On a day when I can see wanting some of this Microsoft technology, small iterative improvements remind me of the inexorable lock-in ahead.
Ray Ozzie is right when he says they’re milling the code. Scott Guthrie stood out almost five years ago in an off-the-record retreat led by Eric Rudder where he rolled out the ASP.Net code. Today he, not Ray, recalled Bill’s mastery of the strategy at as many levels deep as we wanted to check. The old Microsoft is back, but now the question Ray and his team has to answer is what is the metric for success.
Google’s strength is as much a reminder of how not to get sucked back into the panacea of the “rich” internet experience as anything else. Until today, I hadn’t seen anything close to the old feeling Microsoft engendered: the willingness to do what it took to establish a fair price for dominance. Google now has that role, with its simple metric of user time, and I for one will not surrender it lightly. Instead, I will look for the opening the Firefox team took in jujitsuing the IE platform, that Flash leveraged in kicking video into gear, that Apple is doing with Apple TV.
Again, Ballmer is dismissive of Apple’s small market share, not recognizing the palpable sense of fiduciary responsibility to stick with the Mac as a measure of safety against the tyranny of ubiquity. I’ve for so long been the guy on the other side of the question, dismissive of OpenOffice, of Zune, of even the BlackBerry in the face of iPhone. This is not about teams, or stars, or power; it’s about the experience of feeling light on the feet as an attribute of success. It’s the comforting knowledge of being wrong: about open source, about Jason Calacanis, about a host of things I still don’t want to admit but will. But it’s also about the calm fusion of building on those insights, the layering of one world view over the next with its subtle signposts.
Tonight on Heroes we watched an alternate reality not unlike the one we saw performed at Mix. I don’t mean to suggest there are good guys and bad guys here, the tipping point, blah blah blah. No, these people are all heroes; Ray with his nervous manner trying to sell us on the logic of the big plus sign while Scoble and Winer Twitter on nearby. The sync on the Mac slowed to a crawl and I had to reattach for the Q&A, a perfect reminder of the downlevel experience I have in store on the new Web. The Ustream feed was sound-dead, but I still got the drift, enough to hear Udell in the background so I could call him and plum the latency and yet indomitable spirit of my platform.
Yes, I’ll look forward to hearing what Brendan Eich thinks about this challenge, how Udell will keep his integrity and lend Microsoft some of it in the process, how everybody will get their game on as they — all of them — will rise to the occasion and bring these two Webs together.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:55 am
[…] source, about Jason Calacanis, about a host of things I still don’t want to admit but will. Steve Gillmor’s GestureLab » The Two Webs […]
May 1st, 2007 at 10:56 am
[…] Microsoft “rebooted the Web” yesterday One way you can tell how good a product launch is by waiting for the day after effect. Are people still talking about it? Still excited? Does it cause people like Steve Gillmor to change opinions? […]
May 1st, 2007 at 11:33 am
[…] One way you can tell how good a product launch is by waiting for the day after effect. Are people still talking about it? Still excited? Does it cause people like Steve Gillmor to change opinions? […]
May 1st, 2007 at 5:24 pm
[…] news today about Silverlight is significantly more thoughtful. Microsoft-hater Steve Gillmor gives it a thumbs up and says “the engineering behind this is stunning.” Robert Scoble, […]
May 1st, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Where is Joel Sposkey to translate this post????
Joel: please help me… I love these juicy post. I think that I understand it but where is Joel to tell me what really is being said here behind all these gestures….
May 1st, 2007 at 6:57 pm
I don’t agree with Scoble that you have to see what the interest is the next day. That’s too soon. Give it a week. Also wait for one or two of those promises to come true. many a slip betwixt cup and lip when it comes to Microsoft. So they are going to “support” Firefox and Apple? Does that mean contribute code or just publish a “how-to” for people that do? Over the years MS has gone from supporting several hardware platforms to just one: Intel. Not that this would violate that, but *someone* will have to make those Firefox extensions work on all the platforms Firefox runs on won’t they? I think it will start to get complicated, the sort of complications that Adobe and Real have learned to deal with but Microsoft has forgotten.
How does that old saying go?: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Between “fight you” and “win” we should add “then they imitate you”. The cost of “success” in all of this is that Microsoft has to become a service company, like Google. Google has little in the way of an “installed user base” and as such their fortunes could turn around over night. Microsoft doesn’t WANT to be in that position, so they have a choice: Give up the lock-in that goes along with that established based and imitate Google, or play bait and switch and try to destroy (the only strategy Balmer knows) Google before going back to some future lock-in strategy.
I’ll believe MS is going Open when I see them going head to head with not just Google, but all the other Open Web-based API-based products out there (some of which are better than Google’s) and not trying to charge users a premium for it.
MSN loses money. My test web page there now has an animated graphic for bug (the original kind) spray products that pop in front of the page for several seconds annoyingly. If this is their idea of a competing product to all the existing free blog and web page offerings out there then Google and the others have nothing to worry about.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:30 pm
It was a delight to read everything you wrote here, it resonates entirely - a great take.
What’s really wonderful in all the commentary is that pervasive sense of competition you allude to - it fills the air across the space.
Who ever thought one would spur on Microsoft to give it its best shot? And may the best plays win.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:48 pm
Sorry, I am thick. I don’t follow anything of this post at all …
May 1st, 2007 at 8:57 pm
[…] news today about Silverlight is significantly more thoughtful. Microsoft-hater Steve Gillmor gives it a thumbs up and says “the engineering behind this is stunning.” Robert Scoble, […]
May 1st, 2007 at 9:36 pm
This is the first I’ve heard of Silverlight. Maybe because I’m too busy catching up with WinFX and .NET 3.0 framework. And maybe I’m late to that game because I actually have to work with these tools. Being an architect/developer these days is like being a lawyer, doctor or tax accountant– too much crap out there to keep up with.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Okay, this could be a wonderful thing, or it could really suck.
My hatred of FLEX & other flash based RIA platforms is their lack of text rendering fidelity, given they are hosted inside of a web browser. I fear that Silverlight has, by focusing on flash, made the same mistake.
The other potential problem area is how do we get erlang style concurrency on the .net based server side such that these silverlight apps can facilitate group interaction?
May 1st, 2007 at 10:34 pm
[…] 2nd, 2007 · No Comments The geeks are going crazy over Silverlight, and I await rational explanations in English. What I […]
May 1st, 2007 at 10:59 pm
I came here from Scoble, then had to go to Techcrunch and microsoft.com to understand this … I returned and accept your excitement, but not sure what you are saying.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:22 am
[…] news today about Silverlight is significantly more thoughtful. Microsoft-hater Steve Gillmor gives it a thumbs up and says “the engineering behind this is stunning.” Robert Scoble, […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:22 am
[…] news today about Silverlight is significantly more thoughtful. Microsoft-hater Steve Gillmor gives it a thumbs up and says “the engineering behind this is stunning.” Robert Scoble, […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:57 am
[…] Robert Scoble thinks that “Microsoft has rebooted the web”. Wow. Even Steve Gilmour has weighed […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:16 am
[…] Mix Konferenz Glauben schenkt. Und ich glaube das kann man. Notorische Microsoft Hasser wie etwa Steve Gillmor zeigen sich von Silverlight begeistert. Robert Scoble meint sogar: „Microsoft rebooted the […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:45 am
“This is a Microsoft 3.0 iteration, with Visual Studio and Firefox tied at the waist.” More like Firefox being dragged along by a crudely-fitted leash…
If what you say is true, why does the white paper, “Getting Started with Silverlight”, show the install BREAKING in Mozilla Firefox?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190632.aspx#starting_with_wpf-e_topic14
Admire, in all its glory, the XAML as rendered within Mozilla Firefox, as shown in Figure 20 (you’ll have to scroll down a bit). “No suitable plugins were found.”, it seems.
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:57 am
Excellent read! Thumbs up.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:12 am
[…] Silverlight I have been reading more and more about Silverlight, TechCrunch has two articles, one on why it is important as well as one with details. Robert Scoble could not resist with the superlatives and Steve Gillmor penned a thoughful piece. […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:37 am
[…] news today about Silverlight is significantly more thoughtful. Microsoft-hater Steve Gillmor gives it a thumbs up and says “the engineering behind this is stunning.” Robert Scoble, […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:42 am
Call me another doofus, but I also have no idea what you are saying. Yes, a Joel translation would be very helpful!
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Silverlight
is
not
SEO
friendly.
Just like Flash, the content you put into Silverlight will not be seen by Search Engines. So, there is little incentive to put all of your content into an RIA like this. I’m sure it’s great for video and what not. But, anyone who says that this is “rebooting” the web needs to be very realistic here. Nothing beats real HTML Text for making web pages, period.
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:16 pm
[…] version of the .NET Framework. Surprisingly the response from around the tech world; even from those that are not Microsoft fans, has been positive even bordering on […]
May 3rd, 2007 at 5:57 am
[…] do pessoal às novidades. Steve Gillmor, que não é exatamente um amante da Microsoft, deu um parecer bem […]
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:58 am
[…] which is a cross-browser plug-in for creating rich interactive applications, is getting lots of buzz these […]
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:57 am
PJ is right…
Does anyone know, aside from the video codec, why someone would use Silverlight instead of Flex2? (assuming that existing knowledge of one platform was also not part of the consideration)?
I just spent a week learning flex2, just in time for the announcement that it’s being mostly open sourced… at this point I can’t think of any non video, non drm reasons to use Silverlight (I already know .net and c#)… Video and DRM are good reasons, but are there others?
thoughts?
May 4th, 2007 at 3:42 am
[…] instinctive suspicion of Microsoft and it products. Even some diehard MSoft sceptics seem such as Steve Gilmor seem convinced that Silverlight is a home […]
May 5th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I see the hype machine is in progress again.
Silverlight is very raw, a bit half-baked. Needs a better editor, more controls, etc… to build a real app imo
May 5th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
On Firefox - I finally switched. I now wish MS would just shut down IE. Firefox is so much better.
On the spellchecker - amen brother
It’s a beautiful thing!
May 5th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Last comment, doesn’t ‘Silverlight’ remind you of ‘Zune’ on the first PR announcement ?
May 6th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Brilliant post. (Why such weak comments?)
“Instead, I will look for the opening the Firefox team took in jujitsuing the IE platform…”
Imagine a Gecko plug-in for IE. Gecko is the Mozilla Firefox rendering engine. Web publishers could detect and invoke it, thereby enabling Web publishers to directly extend their influence over the Web platform. So long as it *must* work in Firefox, Microsoft is gardening in Mozilla’s backyard, not vice-versa.
When Microsoft lists Firefox on it’s technical roadmap, it’s fair game for the Mozilla Foundation to empower Web publishers to co-opt IE.
The open source, open standards Open Web is a gift worthy of defending. The battlefield is in clear view!
May 7th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Web-Killer 2.0
Carl Howe’s “Microsoft’s Silverlight and Adobe’s Apollo: Web-Killer 2.0” argues that “these proprietary browser extensions break the utility of the World Wide Web in important ways”:
Put users into plug-in hel…