Gone With the Web

or how the age of the web has passed us by

Suppose computers remained as expensive today as they were during the early 70’s. Imagine a hypothetical world where computers crawl and their prices touch the sky. In this alternate universe we would be found checking our emails from a shared computer. It is not farfetched to assume that applications like Microsoft Office and Photoshop would launch first as web applications in such a hostile environment. As web applications they would be easy to license, install, support and customize differently for different users. That would have been the age of the web had it come to pass.

Fortunately for us, we are not stuck in that age thanks to advances in technology. We now own several computing devices that are becoming cheaper, faster and smaller with every iteration. The smaller these devices get, the less reluctant people are to carrying them along, and the more personal they tend become. But from the way many technology behemoths and startups are acting you would think that we are about to enter the age of the web, when instead that age has already slipped passed us.

The online versions of ‘office’ suites by Apple and Microsoft are a case in point. Nobody wants a word-processor or a spreadsheet online, they want it on their mobile and tablet. Nobody wants to use CAD/CAM and Photoshop on the web. Most people now have mobile phones that are powerful enough to run these application, if only they were re-written and designed properly for these devices. If Autodesk and Adobe don’t reinvent their desktop applications for the mobile world someone else will. To web-based startups - don’t flog a dead horse.

This of course does not mean that the web as a whole is dead. The web is still the place to store and analyze data that would be too huge to store and process on a mobile device. Google and Amazon will still run off the web for some time to come. Many other apps will use the web to store, process and retrieve data. But maybe not for long. Breakthroughs in storage and bandwidth may soon make it possible to own personalized versions of Google and Amazon. But these breakthroughs will need an incentive which may not materialize soon.