Once upon a time, there was a movement away from proprietary software platforms into a brave new future. The argument was that actual users dont care about who makes the platform; they care about solving problems and doing their job with a computer-tool. Sun and others rallied behind slogans like "The computer is the network" and around products like Java that were designed to free programs from the chains of proprietary platforms.
In other words, there was a movement against the dominance of the Microsoft platform. And history shows that Microsoft pulled out all the stops and effectively squashed the movement. Today Microsoft is still the king of traditional software, you cannot purchase a sandwich with a share of Sun's stock, and the voices of software freedom have gone silent and went looking for a new champion.
Google has emerged as the leading candidate for that champion position. So-called AJAX technology (ironically invented and abandoned by Microsoft itself) is emerging as a new threat to traditional software. Although AJAX is basically another version of Java and "the network is the computer" idea but times have changed so these ideas are new once more.
Dont expect a revolution but it will be interesting to see how/if Microsoft deals with AJAX.
(Hey, wasnt Ajax a hero from one of Homer's tales?)
New Web-based Technology
Draws Applications, Investors
November 3, 2005
Ajax technology is gaining more notice because it now powers cutting-edge services like Google Inc.'s Google Maps. The popular online-map service lets people call up a specific location on a map and then seamlessly move their computer cursor all around it, bringing new, nearby locations into focus immediately. One could conceivably drag a cursor across a Google map from, say, Fifth Avenue in Manhattan all the way west into the farmland of New Jersey, without ever having to pause or reload the information on the screen.
Ajax-type technologies were first developed by Microsoft in the late 1990s as part of its Internet Explorer Web browser to improve its Internet applications. In 1998, Microsoft released the Web version of its Outlook email product, which technically is an Ajax application and which the company says is now used by about 80 million people. But the name "Ajax" wasn't coined until earlier this year, by Jesse James Garrett of the San Francisco Web consulting firm Adaptive Path. He came up with the pseudo-acronym in the shower while searching for a shorthand way to explain to clients why the recent offerings by Google can perform so robustly.
