Lately, no one seems to be able to generate noise the way the cool kids in the Googleplex do when they squeeze off a random shot into the web application space. What I find interesting is the increasing polarity in the responses I'm reading to each release. The Google Death Cult (GDC) seems bound an determined to laud every new offering, Will the winner of the next cycle of software evolution come from the cloud or the desktop? no matter how half-baked, as a mortal blow to Microsoft. Everything Google does, according to this group, is intended to kill something.
The Google Critics Society (GCS), on the other hand, is increasingly questioning the why and wherefore of each release. Most recently, this group is engaged in a very public examination of what the plan from the Googleplex is. Or, more to the point, if there even is one.
So many words have already been written on this that, rather than rehashing it all for you, I though it would be a lot more expedient to provide you with a sampler of some of the more interesting pieces I've read in the last couple of days to set the stage and then ask a couple of seemingly simple questions. No program will be provided. I suspect you will be easily able to figure out who is in which camp.
OK. Here are my questions:
Looking forward to your thoughts. To get things going, my answers are: