Future of the Web? - 2009 Edition

by Omar AlBadri on 1/8/2009 2:54:00 PM

The Future of the Web - 2009 edition

Future of the Web - 2009 Edition

Every year I play Nostradamus and  I write down my thoughts on what I think the new and emerging paradigm/ideas of the year will be. Here are my predictions for the web for 2009: 

1.  Software is Dead - Long live cloud computing.

Will anyone ever go to a store and purchase anything anymore? In reality on my machine all I have is my development tools and the rest I either download for free ( Firebird) or access via the web(Google Docs). With Salesforce.com and Google is there ever going to be a need to purchase consumer software? I predict that by the end of 2009 software begin its decent into the abyss as Cloud computing and free tools take over making a cheaper more intuitive world wide web

2. Forget the Operating System - just  give me something that runs a web browser

Sort of a corollary to number 1. Do we really need Windows? Has anyone realized that the reason why the Mac are so popular is become everything is available on the web and consumer simple want a robust and worry free OS to run their browsers on. In reality there is less and less of a need for a operating system. Give me something thats robust, run Firefox or some other browser ( just not IE 6 please ) and I can 99% of the things I can do with a windows OS. Get read for more people moving to Mac OS and Ubuntu.

3. TV and the Music industry will finally realize that a head up ones one ass never smells good

Why is South Park one of the least pirated shows out there, yet remains one of the ideal candidates for this medium. Take a look at any top 10 torrents list and South Park never appears, why? This is because creators of South Park realized that there was no point in fighting all the bitTorrent users out there. There thinking was " If they are going to steal it, we might as well beat them to the punch and make it free and available online and recoup our losses with advertising." This thinking is going to become more and more of a reality to the TV and music industry. Even Apple finally convinced the music studios to go DRM free. The problem with piracy is that if someone has the will and desire to do so, he or she will find a way, but the lesson is that we do not mind watching a show on our own time that has one or two commercials in fact we embrace it (see Hulu.com). My prediction is that the TV industry will hopefully wise up and release high quality torrent files with adverts inside them. Hey if I can see Entourage at a high quality for free I would not mind watching a couple of advertisements.

4. If you build it they will come

Before supporting an new device or application was painstakingly expensive, always on going, and difficult to succeed. Now only did you have to provide the framework of such device, you had to create the killer apps that would sell such device. Not anymore, with the advent of the iPhone, more and more companies are simply providing the framework and then letting the community develop the killer apps and then sharing in the rewards. More and more companies are adopting these policies that no only include application development but support as well. As 2009 rolls on more and more companies will turn to the community to provide critical function.

5. More and more companies will realize Open source is not such a bad thing

With the increasing demand of customization and different business model, the "one size fits most" model of software development model is being more and more out dated. With software development becoming increasingly more complex and time consuming, developers are clamoring for a robust framework with more if not complete access to source code. This means code will be more robust, and problems and bugs can get fixed faster. In 2009 more and more commercial products will go open source or at least provide the option.