Paul Thurrott: Google Makes Great MS Alternatives

Paul Thurrott is well known as a Microsoft journalist. It can then take people by surprise when he makes comments that are even mildly critical of Microsoft, which he actually does quite frequently. Most recently, he postulates that Google is attempting to show us a world where we can get everything we need to get done at a computer via a web-based application - making native Windows applications for the most part unnecessary. This rundown of Google offerings by Thurrott called Pondering a Google Desktop  is very impressive.

I have to admit that recently I've started to wonder if this move to mostly web-based services  is truly possible, whereas before I had not considered it truly viable. This ties in to the ongoing rich client / thin client debate that Robert Scoble seems to have going on his blog, where he expresses his belief that rich thin client software just isn't going anywhere. I'd love to see these two in a room, debating the issue in real time. Although I've always historically sided with Scoble on this debate, I think I'm starting to wander to the other side. And it's very simple, clean, light and oh so fast over here.

 

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