Underhyping the Web

Famed venture capitalist John Doerr, who was once elevated tothe "Reckless Optimist's Hall of Fame" by the Silicon Valley based Churchill Club, has some new predictions to make. He believes that the potential of the Internet has been "underhyped." As a panelist at the Club's annual prognostication fest, Doerr argued there is "incredible innovation and systemic rethinking/reinvention in important Web services." He mentioned development in search, commerce, personalization, and browsers as important examples of the overall phenomenon.

Doerr's remarks echoed similar comments made last month in San Francisco at the Web 2.0 conference by Amazon's Jeff Bezos. He contended that the first wave of web development revolved around making the Web useful to consumers. But Bezos believes that the next wave -- the Web services wave -- will focus on enabling computers to talk to each other. To that end, Amazon introduced its own Web services division two years ago and continues to be an innovator on this frontier.

One example: Amazon recently introduced a search feature (dubbed A9.com) that enables the searching of books on its site."The ability to build very thin front end (businesses) and use them to tap into these powerful back ends, I'm very interested in that," said Bezos. "You'll see a huge amount of creativity unleashed there."