About 10 years ago, I worked with a company that partnered with Microsoft in the Medical Software community. Microsoft provided assistance to our company in convincing executives that investing in our company’s product was a good idea. One of the interesting things to come out of the experience was that I got to visit Microsoft’s campus on a couple of occasions, and listen to what Microsoft spelled out as their road map for the future.
Like any company, the name of the game is recurring revenue. To keep growing, you need to keep earning revenue. Just making a single sale every few years to one (group, individual, what have you), is not nearly as nice as having a subscription based income (anyone have a cell phone).
So, Microsoft painted a picture (again, this was 10 years ago) where all applications would be virtual, hosted in the Internet. Office, your desktop and all the applications you would need would be virtual, and all you need is an Internet connection. At the time, I know it wasn’t happening. Windows 2000 just came out, and there was little chance to convince people that they should give up “owning” the software for leasing the software regardless of “free” upgrades etc.
Flash forward to just last week when I logged into my Google account (haven’t logged in in quite some time). I see calendar, file storage, email, chat and dozens of other applications.
It seems to me that Google has heard the Microsoft story and is aiming to beat them to the punch to give users an online desktop, so that desktop applications on the client OS will be a thing of the past, and all you really need is a thin client with a browser (oh did I mention Chrome?).
So, I guess the next phase will be the cost for services provided by Google, if the evil plot is true :-)
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