The Web is a development platform, software is a service, and Google is ready to "ship" a personal software.

The Web as development platform

One company in a different industry, yet with a similar philosophy, is Salesforce.com. The company has built a hosted platform, called Sforce, which lets developers customize Salesforce's applications.

As a proof of concept, Salesforce integrated its customer resource management service with Google Maps and is toying with a few other Google services, including AdSense and Sidebar, said Adam Gross, senior director of product marketing for Sforce.

Gross said companies, such as eBay, Yahoo and Amazon.com, that treat their Web sites as customizable platforms, offer a starkly different technology vision to developers than traditional software companies do.

"We are very much competing for the hearts and minds of developers and bringing very different value propositions and ideas," Gross said. "One model says build for Windows and the Microsoft 'stack'; the other says build for the Internet."

Gross noted that some of the software industry's leading lights are working hard on making the Web a platform. Not so surprisingly, some of those high-powered engineers work at Google.

Two well-known former Microsoft development executives - Adam Bosworth and Mark Lucovsky - are now Google employees.

In his personal Web log, Bosworth articulated his belief that the future of software development is on the Web, not on an individual machine.

"The platform of this decade isn't going to be around controlling hardware resources and rich UI (user interfaces). Nor do I think you're going to be able to charge for the platform per se. Instead, it is going to be around access to community, collaboration and content," Bosworth noted in an entry from last year.

Bosworth wrote that Web pioneers such as Amazon.com, Google and eBay have for years made their services available via Web services APIs to encourage third-party applications and drive Web traffic.

Google faces formidable competition from the other Web portal companies, and financial returns from its expanded product line and developer outreach won't be totally clear for some time, said Gartner analyst Allen Weiner.

"It's a logical path," Weiner added, "but we won't know the outcome for a while."

Google aims for Web developers' hearts and minds
by Martin LaMonica , Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: 8/26/05