SCN: Web future

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

===========================

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, 6/25/00

Many people have said that the Justice Department was fighting the 
last war in their focus on the browser wars. Now that the Justice 
Department has won, Microsoft goes one step further and declares 
that the proposed penalty (forcing Microsoft to give up Windows) 
was the last war as well. 

Operating systems are history as the nexus to coordinate users' 
interactions with their computers. Sure, each device will continue to 
run some kind of OS (maybe Windows, maybe Linux, maybe 
PalmOS, maybe some new thing), but the main user interactions will 
be mediated by network services and not by the OS. The Network is 
the User Experience.  

Of course, Microsoft is not going to publicly proclaim that they have 
abandoned Windows: they expect to make billions as companies 
upgrade to Windows 2000. The strategy is to stall for time in the 
lawsuit and milk the OS as much as possible while preparing for the 
day of divestiture.  

Since the late 1980s, hypertext theory has predicted the emergence 
of a navigation layer that would be the nexus of the user experience. 
Traditionally, we assumed that this would happen by integrating the 
browser with the operating system to create a unified interface for 
manipulating remote information and local files. It has always been 
silly to have some stuff treated specially because it happened to 
come in over a certain network. Browsers must die as independent 
applications. It is counter-productive to have users suffer sub-
standard user interfaces for applications that happen to run across 
the Internet as opposed to the local client-server environment. 
Application functionality requires more UI than document browsing: 
another reason browsers must die.  

The new coordinating layer will manage users' access to 
information objects and functionality objects across multiple 
devices. In the old days of local software, we used to complain 
about the stupidity of having separate spelling checkers for each 
application. The goal was OpenDoc-like integration where a single 
service could apply to multiple data objects. Over the Internet, this 
works even better:  

...the dictionary used in the spelling checker can be instantly 
updated as new words emerge.

...users can license rights to domain-specific dictionaries or slang-
specific dictionaries as needed. 

Microsoft may hope to supply the biggest of these network services, 
but there will be plenty of room for other companies to sell services 
as well, once a single standard infrastructure has been built. Maybe 
people will subscribe to English-language spelling services from 
Microsoft, but dentists will get their specialized spelling checks from 
a company that specializes in Internet services for dentists. 

Similarly with spelling services for smaller languages: Microsoft will 
probably offer Japanese, French, and many other big languages, but 
they won't cover all the languages in the world. And even if 
Microsoft tries to offer, say, French spelling services, nobody says 
that they will win. It will even be possible for several competing 
services to survive for each feature as long as they all follow the 
rules for data interchange and plug into the coordinating nexus.  

The new nexus will coordinate:  

...traditional software services like spelling check. Most of this 
software will be cached on your local device, so there will be no 
need to download several megabytes of code every time you need a 
feature. If the feature has been updated or if you have not used it 
before, it will simply appear.

...information storage to replace the file system with a more flexible 
object storage that works across multiple devices (no more "I forgot 
to bring that file" when you are off on a business trip).

...the user interface, allowing each user's preferences to follow him 
or her around on the Internet.

...user identity and security: hopefully all data will be encrypted at 
all times, except when it is displayed on the user's screen.

...payment services (a nano-payment every time you get a French 
word spell checked, a micro-payment per page view, bigger charges 
when you buy physical stuff).

...user guidance: subscribe to reputation managers to recommend 
products you see on other websites and warn against (or completely 
remove) misleading advertisements.

...guard the user's time and protect against too much email and 
other interruptions. 

This may sound like my 1996 Alertbox "The Internet Desktop" and 
my 1999 Alertbox "User-Supportive Internet Architecture." Fine with 
me. 

What this means for websites: In the short term - nothing. The old 
software will still be out there, and because of the conservatism of 
Web users it will be several years before the majority of users 
upgrade to the new services, even after they ship in 2002. 

Long term changes are profound. Websites will have to stop 
thinking of themselves as the center of the user's attention. Since 
the network is the user experience, individual sites will have to tone 
down their individual designs and aim at fitting in. More about this in 
my next column, The End of Web Design.  

Instead of having every single site supply a complete user 
experience, each site will supply a component of the overall user 
experience that is coordinated by the new nexus. This will lead to 
many opportunities for highly targeted narrow services. Microsoft 
may define the platform, but they cannot supply more than a tiny 
fraction of the necessary services.  

All experience shows that once a standard platform is available, a 
thousand flowers will bloom. Start thinking now about what services 
you can provide once a fully-intertwined Web becomes a reality and 
replaces the point-to-point sites we see today.  

Also plan for making your site benefit from closer integration with 
other services that are running on other sites. No more doing 
everything yourself.  

Sites that attempt to own their own private mini-networks will come 
upon hard times:  

...Amazon's attempt to be a shopping network will be doomed once 
users can perform zero-click shopping everywhere they go with 
privacy and security guaranteed by the new nexus services.

...Yahoo's attempt at a network of information services may not be 
doomed (since they are the most supremely well-designed 
minimalist services on the Web), but the relative importance of 
Yahoo will decline as it becomes easier to navigate to specialized 
services and to integrate them into a sustained user experience 
(and as it becomes easier for specialized services to collect 
payments). 

...Every website you visit can access as many of your 
customization preferences as you are willing to disclose; this will 
greatly diminish the value of special portal start pages (My.foobar). 

...AOL's attempt to have a closed instant messaging system will be 
doomed since an integrated approach that works well with the other 
nexus services will win. 

A new and easier way of constructing integrated services by 
combining multiple online sources may also be bad news for "e-
business builders" like Andersen Consulting and IBM,	 to the extent 
that they rely on skills at constructing monolithic systems.







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