Back in 1999 and 2000, the concept of the 'webtop' was briefly popular. This was the notion that, instead of running all our applications in a Windows desktop, we would run them all on the Web. So a crop of start-up companies and other hopefuls began working — in the primitive browser technology of the time — to try and replicate the look and feel of the Windows desktop. Looking back, I know it all sounds a bit crazy, but these were in what I guess you'd call the 'horseless carriage' days of Web applications, when the only reference points we had for what they should look like was what had gone before.
One of the first I remember seeing was myWebOS.com, which has long since faded from memory but is helpfully preserved in this review from March 2000, which even includes a screenshot. Others released that year included one from anti-virus provider McAfee.com and an ambitious combination of a webtop with what we would now call a platform-as-a-service play by Desktop.com, founded by the original creators of RocketMail, the precursor of Yahoo! Mail.
One of the ironies of the time was that these early pioneers of what we now know as AJAX were using DHTML technologies that were only available in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, thus tying their webtop platforms to the very same operating system they sought to replace. They flattered Windows too by imitating its look and feel in their own creations. In time, it became evident that users weren't really interested in using their browsers to access poor imitations of the Windows desktop, and all these early experiments died out. What users really wanted to access was the Web, and as they began to access more and more sites in their browser, the much simpler innovation of tabbed browsing evolved to meet that need.
Mindful of this history, I was surprised — no let me say, flabbergasted — when yesterday Symantec in its wisdom unveiled a beta of a ... webtop! (It's been a bit of a week for reminiscing, what with IBM's unexpected whizz Back to the future with LotusLive last Monday).
Symantec GoEveryWhere is a browser-based webtop with the sole purpose of allowing users to organize their online applications (ZDNet has a gallery up — spot the similarity to myWebOS?). There are some neat features such as an aggregated view of online storage, so that for example you can view and organize files stored at Box.net alongside others stored online with Symantec. Probably most useful is its implementation of single sign-on, which not only saves you signing in to each individual application but also allows you to enforce a consistent security policy for all your online applications.
But while these are useful features, is the world really going to flock to Symantec's proprietary webtop to get them? The evidence from history suggests a resounding 'no'. In time, the Web will evolve its own native mechanisms to allow these conveniences, and Symantec will have to find some other way to make itself relevant in the on-demand era.
Phil,
This idea goes back farther than 1999-2000. We shouldn't forget Larry Ellison's 1995 pitch in Paris regarding the Network Computer. And I remember attending a seminar by The Yankee Group in 1990 (back when Windows 3.1 was state of the art) on network computing.
For those of us who remember the "good ol' days" of time sharing, it seems like "back to the future."
One thing that does make this concept more feasible today is the prevalence of broadband connections.
Symantec's appeal to individuals faces a basic paradox:
1) People on the go want to have access to their stuff from wherever they are.
2) People on the go are on the go, and therefore aren't always blessed with good network connections.
Symantec takes note of the support headaches that come with PCs -- maybe they'll pitch GoEverywhere to small company IT types. But in their announcement they don't seem to acknowledgment the other great promise of networked files -- facilitation of workgroup collaboration.
I've used bailing wire and twine to do some of what Symantec offers here, using Firefox, Thunderbird, NetVibes, local and remote implementations of WordPress, and a variety of other local and hosted applications.
I'm there with email (via IMAP, webmail, and Thunderbird) and calendars (via Google Calendars + Thunderbird/Lightning + the "Provider for Google Calendar" extension for Thunderbird).
I still haven't found a good, tidy, trouble-free, Thunderbird-friendly way of keeping contacts synchronized.
What I'm after is the best of all possible worlds:
1) A copy of my files online that I can access (securely) through any web browser -- along with the capability of doing something with those files. (If it's a word processing or spreadsheet file, I want to edit it.)
2) A synchronized copy of the same files on my laptop, along with the capability of working with the files.
3) The ability to allow others to get to the same files via the network, and view or edit them in accordance to rules that I would establish.
Ideally, all of the pieces of this solution would be open sourced, not proprietary.
Is that asking too much? :)
No one has put together the total package. I agree that Symantec's attempt here is not overly impressive.
-- Pete Farmer