A
Platform Beats an Application Every Time
http://www.oreillynet.com
09/30/2005
In each of its
past confrontations with rivals, Microsoft has successfully played the platform
card, trumping even the most dominant applications. Windows allowed Microsoft
to displace Lotus 1-2-3 with Excel, WordPerfect with Word, and Netscape Navigator
with Internet Explorer.
This time, though,
the clash isn't between a platform and an application, but between two platforms,
each with a radically different business model: On the one side, a single
software provider, whose massive installed base and tightly integrated operating
system and APIs give control over the programming paradigm; on the other,
a system without an owner, tied together by a set of protocols, open standards
and agreements for cooperation.
Windows represents
the pinnacle of proprietary control via software APIs. Netscape tried to wrest
control from Microsoft using the same techniques that Microsoft itself had
used against other rivals, and failed. But Apache, which held to the open
standards of the web, has prospered. The battle is no longer unequal, a platform
versus a single application, but platform versus platform, with the question
being which platform, and more profoundly, which architecture, and which business
model, is better suited to the opportunity ahead.
Windows was a
brilliant solution to the problems of the early PC era. It leveled the playing
field for application developers, solving a host of problems that had previously
bedeviled the industry. But a single monolithic approach, controlled by a
single vendor, is no longer a solution, it's a problem. Communications-oriented
systems, as the internet-as-platform most certainly is, require interoperability.
Unless a vendor can control both ends of every interaction, the possibilities
of user lock-in via software APIs are limited.
Any Web 2.0 vendor
that seeks to lock in its application gains by controlling the platform will,
by definition, no longer be playing to the strengths of the platform.
This is not to
say that there are not opportunities for lock-in and competitive advantage,
but we believe they are not to be found via control over software APIs and
protocols. There is a new game afoot. The companies that succeed in the Web
2.0 era will be those that understand the rules of that game, rather than
trying to go back to the rules of the PC software era.
