Right Model Wrong Architecture vs Right Architecture Wrong Model

…Or more simply Microsoft vs Google

Interesting remarks from Bill Gates chronicled by Liz Gannes of GigaOm.

According to Liz:

We each got to ask Gates one question. I asked which applications he forecast to live within the browser and which outside of it.He replied that the distinction would come to be silly from a technical standpoint, but that the necessary movement toward web APIs does present challenges on the business side. “One of the things that’s actually held the industry back on this is, if you have an advertising business model, then you don’t want to expose your capabilities as a web service, because somebody would use that web service without plastering your ad up next to the thing.”

His solution wasn’t very specific: “It’s ideal if you get business models that don’t force someone to say ‘no, we won’t give you that service unless you display something right there on that home page.”

Then for the tease: “And, you know, [inside the browser and outside the browser are] moving towards each other, but there’s still a bit of a barrier there, and new technology, things we’re working on, really will change that.”

Interesting in a few respects. On the closing quote, we were talking with a journalist yesterday who reminded us that way back when Microsoft was making the case that the Internet was just an extension of WindowsNT. Hmmm…

All kidding aside, I think Bill is definitely onto something here. If apps and data are going to primarily live in the cloud and we’re going to access them as Live Services, there are two fundamental issues that must be dealt with (and probably many more as well).

1) Scale of the presence engine. Live Services need presence, and making everything live exponentially increases the number of “presentities” (the network nodes and data streams on the network that publish and subscribe to presence information). This is no longer one person one device type presence but one person many devices, many applications, data stores, etc. How well presence scales becomes super relevant in this scenario.

2) You’ve got to have an extraordinary level of trust in the provider of Live Services that they are going to protect your data and deliver services when you need them.

Google presents a real challenge to Microsoft because they have already embraced Live Services and have the infrastructure and architecture to roll them out broadly. But…do you trust a company with an advertising model to protect your privacy and other data? They make their living off of selling your information after all.

Microsoft on the other hand has an infrastructure and architecture that doesn’t lend itself very well to rolling out Live Services. Its applications are heavy and its development model (Ray Ozzie’s initiatives notwithstanding) has not proven itself nimble in a “Web 2.0” sense. That said, they don’t rely on advertising and have a history of providing trusted (albeit security deficient) applications.

At present, there is no one company covering these issues comprehensively. Microsoft must build scalable presence, Google must build trust. At Jabber, Inc. we’re watching this looming battle with the inherent interest of an arms dealer.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 at December 15, 2006 and is filed under Commentary, Jabber, Inc., Presence, XMPP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.