Browser Wars - Return of the Choice

A long time ago before the dot com crash there was a war. The mighty Netscape lost the war and the evil Microsoft dominated the Internet ever since.

The rebel forces of Netscape went into hiding as Mozilla. Along came the New Hope, Firefox with new powers that the Death Star (a.k.a. Internet Explorer) could only dream of.

Yesterday the latest in the new breed browsers was released from Google which now means that all 3 of the big players in Web 2.0 have released browsers for Windows.

Apple Safari - http://www.apple.com/safari/

Google Chrome - http://www.google.com/chrome/

Microsoft IE8 - http://www.microsoft.com/ie8/

And Firefox is at Version 3 - http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Just like last time, these are all free products. The web has evolved into an application platform and it is clear the this is what Google aims to capture with it's release. I'm not sure why Google decided to go it alone when they did appear to have some kind of relationship with the Firefox group.

Guess time will tell as to who will win this round of the browser wars.

Microsoft Mesh and Google App Engine - Up in the clouds

Google App Engine was publicly discussed first but the Microsoft Live Mesh project wasn't far behind.

Somehow since I'm in Australia and that the weekend it all went live I was offline I can't seem to get an account with either.

The Google version at least lets you download a local test server and sandbox to play in but for now it is only in Python.

The Microsoft version has more freedom in terms of the programming language you choose to use by seems more restrictive as to who they will let play with the Beta.

Although these two technologies are different on the surface (and inside in many places) they WILL end up competing for the same applications, developers, and users.

Why? Well simply because if you breakdown what each of them really offer the application developer then you'll see that they are both going to do the same thing just in a slightly different way.

At this point in time I'd say that the Microsoft offering looks more featured and has the desktop support needed to ease users into the true Web 2.0 application world but Google isn't one to give up easily and they will have to Open Source/Linux community on side from day one... Will this become the browser war of next few years?

What if Apple only pick one to support natively on the iPhone? Who is the bigger threat to them, Google and Android or Microsoft and Windows Mobile?

Apple iPhone SDK

I should have known... Although this is the coolest and latest platform to develop applications for, you need a Mac (or PC) running Mac OS X. Oh well a MacBook is only $1,500... Anyone want to donate one to me? Apple, you listening?

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/