The end of the road for google apps?
05/05/07 15:20 Filed in: Internet
The End of .Mac and Google Apps?: "mattnyc99
writes 'In his weekly tech column for Popular
Mechanics, Glenn Derene predicts that everyone will
have a home server to network their house within 10
years—rendering Apple's .Mac accounts and Google's
productivity software useless. As prices for products
like HP's MediaSmart Server drop and as processing
power becomes more pervasive, Derene says, 'you'll
ultimately need a centralized server—that
high-powered traffic cop—to coordinate the non-stop
exchange of information between your new multitude of
devices.''Read
more of this story at Slashdot.
(Via Slashdot.)
(Via Slashdot.)
I've got to say that this
article gave me pause for through.
And not just for the fact that somehow the author managed to group google apps (which is nice, very useful and free) together apples .mac (which is has very nice web mail, but which not massively useful and way to expensive). Has the author ever used .mac? Probably not.
Anyway apart from that I think I'd have to agree with the author.
For some time now I've thought that the growing power of web apps means they will start to push in to the territory of desk top apps. But for me and I suspect a lot of people, I don't feel 100% comfortable with having my data stored on a distant companies servers, particularly when that company a) doesn't get any money directly from me and b) has made most of it's money by selling advertising.
The idea of having the server based at our own home certainly eases these sorts of worries for me, although to be fair it dose remove one of the good features of using google apps. If your house burns down, you probably lose all of your data, unless you have a good off site back up (so like I said you lose all of your data!) It is however unlikely that all of google's data centers are going to burn down together!
Anyway now that fast boardband is widely available and todays machines are massively over powered for most jobs (other than playing games, which just seem to keep on wanting more and more processing power) I think this could be the future.
Okay this sort of thing has been talked about before, remember all the hype in the early 90's about java based application servers, but I think the time for this idea has come. Think about the fact that mobile phones are now starting to get fast-ish connections now. This makes this sort of remote application much more available and hence usable.
Maybe in light of this, googles purchases in this area are starting to make sense. They already offer a version of google apps for corporate customers, so why not sell a cut down version for home use?
The one question that google would have to ask it's self is, would it make up from selling these servers what it would lose in advertising revenue from it's gmail service?
And not just for the fact that somehow the author managed to group google apps (which is nice, very useful and free) together apples .mac (which is has very nice web mail, but which not massively useful and way to expensive). Has the author ever used .mac? Probably not.
Anyway apart from that I think I'd have to agree with the author.
For some time now I've thought that the growing power of web apps means they will start to push in to the territory of desk top apps. But for me and I suspect a lot of people, I don't feel 100% comfortable with having my data stored on a distant companies servers, particularly when that company a) doesn't get any money directly from me and b) has made most of it's money by selling advertising.
The idea of having the server based at our own home certainly eases these sorts of worries for me, although to be fair it dose remove one of the good features of using google apps. If your house burns down, you probably lose all of your data, unless you have a good off site back up (so like I said you lose all of your data!) It is however unlikely that all of google's data centers are going to burn down together!
Anyway now that fast boardband is widely available and todays machines are massively over powered for most jobs (other than playing games, which just seem to keep on wanting more and more processing power) I think this could be the future.
Okay this sort of thing has been talked about before, remember all the hype in the early 90's about java based application servers, but I think the time for this idea has come. Think about the fact that mobile phones are now starting to get fast-ish connections now. This makes this sort of remote application much more available and hence usable.
Maybe in light of this, googles purchases in this area are starting to make sense. They already offer a version of google apps for corporate customers, so why not sell a cut down version for home use?
The one question that google would have to ask it's self is, would it make up from selling these servers what it would lose in advertising revenue from it's gmail service?
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