Google Pitches a Web-Centric Future

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/google-pitches-a-web-centric-future/?ref=technology

Google delivered its vision of a Web-centric future on Wednesday in front of around 5,000 software developers at its annual Google I/O conference.

The presentation was unapologetically geeky, steeped in the language and minutiae of the technical standards that will drive the next wave of innovation on the Internet. For the Google faithful, at least, the meal was hearty.

Google’s vision of the future is starkly different from those laid out by its rivals Apple and Microsoft, and calls for rich multimedia applications that operate within the browser — without the separate applications that people now download to their PC desktops or mobile phones.

I like the idea of applications living in the cloud or server-side, rather than on my machine. I think it's an accessibility issue, really. I don't have to download an add-on or have any special applications in order to view the web content. From the web content provider, they can reach the widest possible audience in a way that doesn't ask the user to do anything special, or have any special application available on their machine. Plus, all the tinkering on the application can be done without asking users to make updates.