Bye bye desktop, $1B Web Cloud is new home for apps: Google

Stan Beer
Thursday, 12 June 2008 08:20

Opinion and Analysis

As Ovum's analyst explains:

"To showcase its client-Cloud connectivity, Google detailed several examples at the conference. The first was the integration of Google Gears (a browser add-on in the Adobe Flash mould that allows for richer browser experiences) to enhance search in MySpace email.”

“Gears works by persistently storing, synchronizing and manipulating data locally in the browser, effectively allowing online applications to function offline. Next it unveiled a new 'rent-a-Cloud' pricing for its App Engine software that allows you to build Web applications that run on Google's Cloud infrastructure that is based on CPU use per hour - a model that sounds very similar to Amazon.com's Web services.”

"Google also presented a new version of the Google Web Toolkit which allows developers to build rich Internet applications in Java; the hosting of new Ajax libraries that lets developers improve the performance of their Web applications using JavaScript tagging; and a strategy for transforming Web applications into mobile applications using a new SDK for its Android federated smartphone platform. The SDK basically provides WebKit views and allows mobile applications to be built using Web browser technology as the user interface.”

"Finally, Google also showcased interesting Web 2.0-like application development technologies for single sign-on for the Web (OpenID), universal authorization (OAuth) and a social network development 'standard' (Open Social). These technologies promise to connect Web pages, applications and service to the 'sticky' social Web.”

"These diverse tools and technologies might seem loosely unintegrated and targeted at different areas. In fact they're all cogs and wheels of a more meaningfully connected Web that hosts Google Web services powered by the Google App Engine. Importantly some of these Web services and applications aren't written just by Google, but by an entire market of independent developers."