I am sure this will re-ignite the browser speculation, but I think the thing after the browser, whatever it may be, is far more interesting to speculate upon.
Thanks for the tip, Steve.
Firefox Pro Going to Google
I am sure this will re-ignite the browser speculation, but I think the thing after the browser, whatever it may be, is far more interesting to speculate upon. Thanks for the tip, Steve….
“but I think the thing after the browser, whatever it may be, is far more interesting to speculate upon.”
The evolution of the browser into some form of personalized content console, fully based on a standards-defined open architecture, seems likely. Existing forays into this have all been hampered by being proprietary and closed in nature, hence lacking the rapid innovation which ensues from tapping the open development ecology and lacking the trust of and adoption by consumers.
A future adaptation of existing browsers (such as Firefox) that combined (a) the best in breed browser technology for content rendering (b) an abstracted evolution of the innovations we’re presently seeing in RSS feeds for new content (feed) discovery and automated delivery of that content (c) automatic personalization of the content delivered, a la Findory, where appropriate.
This can all be done now, but in a closed proprietary fashion. It’s the establishment of relevant standards here which is crucial, to create an open architecture and enabling clean separation of the consumer’s Console, the content providors’ Content and Feed services, and crucially the content and feed Discovery and Personalization services intermediating between consumer and content.
This would allow the consumer to run their choice of console, into which they could plug content discovery and personalization services from multiple vendors, each in turn delivering content from multiple content providors and sources.
That’s where I see things headed.
Yes Indeed John, what about an app for the mobile and pda. This could be the quickest route to disintermediating Microsoft & Yahoo! in the short/medium term.
Whats more the app could back up all those mobile numbers & messages etc on that huge platform.
Lose your mobile, dont worry just log back in folks – aargh thanks Google – you saved my life.
Agreed that it’s what follows the browser that will be interesting. For a glimpse, I think Apple on Kanfabulator are on tom something. Knofabulator completely blew it by creating and selling a propritery runtime. A simple (X/D)html renderer + EMCAScript interpreter would have been sufficient. Apple’s Dashborad won’t be out for a few months.
I was also wondering if search could be improved with a more specialized client. Search results could come back in XML to a client that can “speak” data better…columns, filtering, sorting, etc. The dhtml/javascript of snap.com isn’t there yet.
It’s too late for Google to expect people to abandon Firefox (and IE) and go for yet another (google-branded) browser. My guess is that Google wants to provide better support in their toolset for people who use Firefox. Support for searching Thunderbird mail, google toolbar for Mozilla, etc.