When I read articles like this from O’Reilly I can’t stop thinking about a spoof site that was around (is it still around?) called ‘O’Really’. The author of this article has an interesting point about Google leading the way forward for web based applications, and if Google are successfuly in this space then you bet Microsoft will be following in their footsteps with an exact clone on Google Spreadsheets. Microsoft already dipped their toe in this water a couple of years back with their ‘Hailstorm’ initiative to provide online services for everything (think subscription based on-demand online Microsoft applications), but they never got this off the ground – maybe it was ahead of it’s time? Anyway, Google are making a good go at this and you bet Microsoft are watching.
The author’s point though is a little far fetched, since there is always going to be server based processing of data of one kind or another. Ok,so now he’s got our attention, ‘it’s ok folks, nothing to see here, move along’ – you can all go back to your Eclipse or your Netbeans and continue working on your latest Java project…