Brad Neuberg, Google Gears, and the Future of the Web

Linux.com has an interesting look at Google Gears and one of its leading evangelists, Brad Neuberg. "For Neuberg -- as for most developers -- the idea of expanding the Web's capabilities is intriguing in itself. But both inside and outside Google, his argument is that there's more at stake than just a particular piece of technology. In fact, he does not even seem particularly concerned whether Gears or some rival project takes on the role he envisions. What matters, he says, is that finding a solution to the problems of the Web is essential not only to the continued evolution of the Web, but also to its continued freedom. "

Fairly Rhetorical... Maybe I didn't understand?

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

How does a guy who says 'Lets keep it working so it can still be used' qualify as news... I thought it was just common sense!

am i glad

[ionix5891]

that the buzzwords like "web {[0-9]}.0" or "semantic web" are missing from a topic discussing future of the web

Re:Why does the web need to evolve

[QuantumG]

Ya mean like Second Life?

Heh, sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Why does the web need to evolve

[misleb]

Why can't we leave the web alone, use it for what we use it for now and develop a new rich application protocol if that is what people want. It might end up replacing the web like the web replaced gopher, which replaced Archie before it, or it might become an addition to the suite of internet protocols. Why does my web browser have to be all things to all people?

Because getting a fundamentally new common runtime environment and/or protocol to all people is f'ing hard. Especially now that the 'net has matured. With maturity comes momentum and inertia.

Re:Google vs. Ajax

[vux984]

After several years of deployment, Google Maps still displays incorrectly in Firefox 2 if you spin the scroll wheel too fast. That's about where window refresh was at Microsoft Windows 2.x or so - broken.

AJAX is a method to shoehorn functionality into a trifecta of legacy platforms that was never really designed for it. Like retrofitting a horseless carriage with a honda civic engine and bolting on some wings, a rudder, and a propeller with the intent to fly across the atlantic.

Just because you've gotten it to fly doesn't mean you've invented a modern aircraft.

Re:Why does the web need to evolve

[grumbel]

USENET did not have to evolve,

Did not have to evolve? Because it didn't evolve we are now stuck with dozens of web forums with proprietary data storage and no way to retrieve posts other then the HTML interface. Yeah, I know USENET still exist, but pretty much everything these days happens on either mailing lists or web forums which both lack a lot of features that USENET had back then 20 years ago.

When you don't evolve stuff you have a very good chance to end up with a whole bunch of ugly ad hoc fixes.

will they keep my data for 10 years

[datadefender]

Call me old-fashioned, but I want to control where my data is stored and I want to make sure the programs I use to work my data is around years later. That is why I story my data locally (and a backup offsite) and keep my software locally on my PC. I decide when to migrate to a new version or application and only after I have verified it works with my data etc. With Web-Apps I have absolutely no control when new releases are forced on me and potentially cannot deal with my 10 year old data. I still use Office 97 - works just fine - no need to upgrade. And the data itself ? Will it still be available 10 years from now when stored at Google or some other service provider. What happens if the Google business model some day no longer works ? Will they then charge me to get to my data ?

Re:Why does the web need to evolve

[Lazy Jones]

Because getting a fundamentally new common runtime environment and/or protocol to all people is f'ing hard. Especially now that the 'net has matured. With maturity comes momentum and inertia.

Sorry, I don't get this. Java has been succesful at this (as well as other languages that can run on top of the JavaVM), Flash has been succesful, heck, even Linux and stuff like MAME is spreading all over with some effort.

Let's not talk about enabling things in different ways, let's talk instead about how, after all these years with ever-increasing hardware performance, we're building layers upon layers of inefficient software so we can have crappy application performance all over again. Trying to run applications with Javascript in a browser on a mobile phone, can it get more wasteful than that?

Use Java, it's not perfect, but it's widespread, it gets the job done and is reasonably fast. Until we have a less bloated and equally widespread language, that is...

Re:Why does the web need to evolve

[Sancho]

Java has been succesful at this (as well as other languages that can run on top of the JavaVM), Flash has been succesful

These work in the web browser. There's little obvious difference between these technologies and "the Internet" as far as the common person is concerned.

Let's not talk about enabling things in different ways, let's talk instead about how, after all these years with ever-increasing hardware performance, we're building layers upon layers of inefficient software so we can have crappy application performance all over again. Trying to run applications with Javascript in a browser on a mobile phone, can it get more wasteful than that?

There are really two problems here.

One of the problems is data. I want access to my data. I want access to it anywhere. When I'm at a restaurant, I want to be able to pull out my phone and check my calendar, my mail, even open a file on my desktop. When I'm on a business trip, I want the same access on my laptop.

There are lots of solutions to the data problem--some of them are fairly old. IMAP is a really handy protocol for keeping your mail accessible from just about anywhere, for example.

The other problem is user-friendlyness. Consistency is part of this. There are lots and lots of Internet users who, when confronted with a new and unfamiliar interface, will simply freeze up. I'm sure that it's largely psychological, but ultimately, the underlying cause is irrelevant. People want consistency in how they access their data.

The solution to this problem lies in Google Gears and similar technologies. It lies in allowing the web browser to be a portal into your data (though allowing access in other ways is important, too, so that people who don't mind other, more efficient interfaces can use them.)

Google handles both problems simultaneously, and quite well. If I want to use the Google Mail interface while I'm offline, I can. If I want to access my data without using javascript in a browser, I can do that with either IMAP or POP.