The Changing of the Guard on the Internet

The Old Guard
We have been living in an internet world dominated by a number of major players: Microsoft, Dell, Sun, and Oracle. These companies will continue to have influence for a while, especially on the business desktop. But when you take any young person and mention Microsoft, they are not cool anymore. They are the last generation's toys and power technology, the stock market tech darlings.

The next generation will soundly reject the Boomer Generation's technology choices. It's the right of every generation.

The New Guard
For some of the same financial reasons, the next generation of cool technologists are being established.However, they have familiar names. The new power group will likely be Google, Apple, Adobe, and Linux/Open Source. For the next gen, they are simply cool.

Google is arguably the best company to work for on the planet. Their balance sheet is amazing, and they are the darling of Wall Street. Does anyone seriously think that MSN search is going to bury Google? Not a chance, no way, not even close. Google won the mind share war long ago. That's why Steve Balmer throws chairs when he hears the name Google. No amount of money or market pressure can defeat them. Google can't be harmed by Microsoft, and everyone knows it. Google is cool, and have succeeded in not becoming Microsoft-like.

Apple has those great commercials, those iPods, and now iPhones. The dork with the failing PC, the group of sick dorks after Vista, it's all very funny, and 100% true. We all know it. The fact that the Microsoft zealot-dork is hilarious, and resonates, explains my point. The cool/gen gap displayed in full view.

Steve Jobs owns cool right now. The design style that is associated with Web 2.0 is decidedly Apple. In fact, my next computer will be a Mac, because my development is now entirely on the web. Every tool I need is available on the Mac. And if I need a Windows app, I'll use Parallels, now that the new Macs have Intel architecture.

Adobe had me worried when they bought Macromedia, making them practically a creative tools monopoly overnight. But instead of bleeding their customers, stopping true innovation, and locking everyone in, a la Microsoft, they have done the opposite. They have innovated like mad, and embraced the Linux community. No kidding. Look at Adobe Labs and the CS3 product line, actions speak louder than words, and they are on a serious tear. They are also massively cool.

Linux and Open Source really got traction after the .Com bust, because they are all about cost, namely FREE. What's to argue? The Old Guard, which says comments like the monumentally stupid, "We need to get away from this open source crap." If Google can run on Linux and MySQL, it's not crap, is it? I don't think so. Google, Yahoo!, and a majority of the web are using Linux web servers, and growing fast. LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) is here to stay. The quality is better from LAMP than it is from any cooked up .Net solution. And Java hasn't exactly changed the world like it promised.

When the next financial bubble bursts, which could be any day now, Linux will grow even bigger.Ubuntu is even getting a serious look from Dell and HP (who's gums are seriously bleeding from the Vista disaster, reverting back to XP, over Microsoft objections). The younger gen is now even playing with Linux on their desktops.

And they have iPods. And they podcast.

And they are watching YouTube (using Adobe's Flash Player).

And they Blog, Flickr, and use a dozen more weird web technology names.

And they launch their Firefox browser and search on Google.

Personally, I think this is good news. We need a new guard, with fresh ideas about making life better for people. The things the old guard used to do before they got a huge stack of money and started concentrating on lawsuits, market share, and playing hardball business. And ignoring the average person. Especially ignoring the average young person.

-- Cole Joplin