
Tim O'Reilly on The State of the Internet Operating System - estherschindler
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/state-of-internet-operating-system.html
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symesc
"The only platform that really works is a platform with no platform vendor,
and that’s the Internet." --Dave Winer
[http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/01/heyMikeIToldYouS...](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/08/01/heyMikeIToldYouSo.html)

All vendors attempt to influence the relative positioning of their
applications on their platforms. Microsoft and Apple have long thrived with
this model, and I expect Google to too.

The difference with Google is that I also expect them to be more open about
it, hence the open sourcing of Android and perhaps other OS moves they make.

I think this is significant because of Google's investment into public
infrastructure. They are not building out a platform upon which only they can
make money. I see Google as the number one contributor to the Internet
Operating System today.

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jlees
A fascinating article and on the money IMO. I definitely see this outsourcing
of capacity to anonymised servers in the cloud, with tools like map/reduce and
memcached becoming cloud-equivalents of single-OS concepts.

Interesting how social is just one aspect, though; and the logical integration
of social into this model is as a platform or API. Just as in the 'perfect' OS
you would have a centralised address book, in the Internet OS you have a
platform-neutral, universally-accessible social graph. Is social just a part
of the picture? The way I see it, social's the _centre_ of the picture,
lately.

There's also a fight between local-resource apps and this thin-client
approach, mainly for functionality that can't be outsourced to the cloud -
gaming, Excel, even some kinds of hacking. Google Docs, games-in-the-browser
technologies are working to fight this, but it's not going to be an overnight
battle.

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seiji
The article is more interesting as an insight into Tim's mind. He thinks very
highly of himself. He claims that he alone organizes and launches all the
O'Reilly conferences.

Maybe it was done for brevity, or maybe he alone truly is the heart of the
company. I would feel uncomfortable taking sole credit for organizing and
launching conferences without acknowledging the few hundred people who
actually do the work.

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jacobolus
I don’t think when he says he’ll talk about “the rationale behind conferences
I organize” he’s trying to imply he’s solely responsible for them.

One thing that leaders of companies (or any other organizations) do is
articulate the vision behind their institutions’ actions. Using the first
person for that purpose is pretty common. (Maybe presumptuous, but I don’t
think by intent.)

