The last couple of days have been interesting for those of us who work in technology, and subscribe to a whole boatload of tech news feeds. The news:
* Microsoft takes a stake in Facebook, which thinks it's worth $15B
* Google is super valuable... 1 share = $700
* Google announces OpenSocial, to open up the social network development platform.
Why, you might ask, does this matter? Because many in the computing business think that boxes labeled "Windows Vista" and "Adobe Photoshop" are a thing of the past. You won't need Windows (or OSX) to get to the web, and almost all the applications you currently use (Mail, photos, movies, word processing, etc) are going to live on the web. And a lot of these are going to be supported by advertising closely targeted to you.
Facebooks developer platform-- while filled mostly with crap-- has shown that this web-delivered application world is closer at hand, perhaps. Who's going to own that world? Microsoft (probably not), Google (very likely), Facebook (perhaps, they certainly think so) or someone else? The big shots of the tech world are getting in now, and they're making some bets.
p.s. --I have to ask this question because of my old loyalties: Where is Yahoo!? What do those 6 hour long executive meetings sound like in Sunnyvale? Show us something, my people!
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Last time I was in SF, I was talking about this with Damon and Natalie. And I feel like schools are slow in utilizing these online applications. We are trying too, some places already do but it is so hard to get past all the bureaucratic tape.
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