Two pieces published within days of each other explore the weaknesses of IE and the opportunities generated for the future of computing, the web, etc:
Steve Gillmor argues that a faltering and "under-developed" IE has admitted RSS ...
Ben Hammersley, writing in The Guardian Online, echoes Marc Canter and Joel Spolsky:
... what would happen if people's web browsers were capable of running complex applications, with code based on openly published specifications? Two things: first, the operating system would become irrelevant, so there would be no need to upgrade to the next version of Windows, and second, the playing field for everything else would be thus levelled. The majority of Microsoft's business, therefore, could have been threatened if the IE browser team had continued past 2001.The concept of running applications within the web browser is not a new one, and indeed has been tried before and failed. But today, with a combination of cheaper bandwidth and improvements in storage and clustering technology, things are looking promising. ... Google is a very good example of this. The reasoning behind its new webmail product, Gmail, puzzles many, but makes a lot more sense when you think of it as the first in a line of major web applications built to replace desktop programs. If you start to consider Google's own system as your hard drive, and your browser as your operating system, you might see how Microsoft could be deeply worried. No one would need to keep buying Windows, or upgrading Office if all they had to do was pay Google a monthly stipend for effectively unlimited storage, guaranteed backup and an installation or upgrade process consisting of typing in a URL.
