The Web is Dead, Long Live the Web!

Post date: Sep 06, 2010 6:17:36 AM

This is not so much about wars between browsers but whether or not browsers are on the way in, or on their way out!

Wired.com in http://m.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/ published this graph-like picture from Cisco

The browser part (in red marked "web") at the bottom is seen to be steadily decreasing. What it does show is that internet bandwidth will increasingly be dominated by data traffic meant for different applications. TechCrunch in http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/17/wired-web-dead/ thinks that there will be a resurgence.

"First the browser took over everything, then developers wanted more options and moved to apps (desktop and mobile), but the browser will eventually absorb those features, and so the leapfrogging continues."

But without taking sides, so will the Apps. So even with HTML5 etc etc.., there will be future Apps that will surpass even the new features. Besides, as Fred Wilson admits in http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/is-the-web-dead.html

"I am personally rooting for HTML5 to reverse this trend. But I hear that HTML5 is a few years away from where it can be the platform we all want it to be."

I got all the above links from http://shufflr.tv/blog/2010/08/23/of-browser-apps-and-stand-alone-apps/ which although admitting to the above points, still tries to be neutral.

Now where does that leave us? By far, the majority of video and audio media is accessible online through a browser. True these guys are scrambling to develop Apps to play these but only as a response to the rise of mobile computing. Where will all that Video and P2P traffic etc.. go to? My take is Apps. The reason is simple. Browsers must be optimized for general browsing. Apps can be specifically optimized for their particular app (!) e.g. video. You could build Video and even full-screen display into a general purpose browser. But could, would you put in gamma compensation, advanced contrast enhancement, dynamic mpeg noise reduction etc. etc.. Also the moment the browser people put these in, together with other things that will enhance audio etc.. The Audio and Video specialized people will figure out new things to put in their audio and video. So this is not a see-saw battle where one party has the advantage for some time and another party has the advantage at another. This is the evolution of what the internet can and cannot do. Prior to this, Internet technology was not able to efficiently deliver streaming media, now it can. And the world changes!