If you haven't read my previous post, you should. Then you should read this guy's post, which was on linked off of Slashdot today. He's saying a lot of the same things that I predicted:
- Nice, Open, APIs seem like they may be going away (Google's search API for example)
- Widgets and Mashups are being fought by the services that they are built on
On the surface, it might seem like he agrees with me. The only thing is, his reason is that he just doesn't like or trust corporations and think they benefit more from fighting each other than they do from sharing information. That's not the reason I gave, or at least, it's so unarticulated that it's practically worthless.
Predictions based on perceived human nature are deeply flawed in my opinion, and often turn out to be wrong. Beyond that, the idea that working against competitors is always the best economic course of action, while a classic basis for capitalism, is quite outdated. The mathematician John Forbes Nash, the character that the film "A Beautiful Mind" is about, showed us way back in the 1950's that sometimes a more profitable solution involves cooperative, or at least, non-competitive strategy between opponents. This is called a Nash Equilibrium. Now, I'm generalizing Nash Equilibriums fairly wildly and inaccurately, but I'm just trying to get the basic idea across.
I think Mr. Downes (the author of the post) may be largely correct about some of the changes that are going to come about on the web, but if he is, it's for all the wrong reasons.
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