Will Microsoft lose in the race to Web 2.0?

As a senior analyst with Jupiter Research, Joe Wilcox largely focuses on Microsoft and illuminating the right strategies for efficiently deploying Microsoft products, smartly partnering with the software giant or competing more effectively with the fast-moving rival.

Wilcox is part of Jupiter Research’s Microsoft Monitor team. He is main contributor to the Microsoft Monitor Weblog, which, as a companion to the larger service, offers spot analysis on breaking Microsoft news or shifting strategies.

We asked for his views on Web 2.0.

PCW: How would you define Web 2.0 as we currently understand it?

Joe Wilcox: Web 2.0 is really Web 1.0 returned, but this time as a more viable option.

There was talk of software as a service or services consumed via the web browser in the late-1990s. But the dotcom bust and other factors, such as low broadband penetration, doomed the concept.

Yet it reincarnated and took on new life as Web 2.0.

Conceptually I see Web 2.0 as being simply defined with the browser as the main means for consumption. For years, many people bought PCs as much (or more) for the Internet than desktop applications.

The natural extension is for people to spend lots of time on the Internet and consume lots of stuff there, whether websites, blogs, instant messaging, photo sharing, music listening or much more.

In Europe nearly half the population, an addressable market of 188.8 million individuals, are now online.

PCW: There seems to be a clear move away from desktop-based application to web-based software. Do you think that the net as a platform is now changing to embrace the next wave of applications that will exist entirely online?

JW: The shift toward web-delivered applications replacing desktop applications was attempted before without success, and none is assured this time.

Some software developers – Microsoft in particular – depend on their vast desktop assets and won’t meekly let web-based applications run them over.

PCW: Do you think as more data such as music, photos, movies and general data becomes digital people want the freedom to access it anywhere anytime? Is this move to net what Web 2.0 is all about?

JW: Where people store stuff is much more about culture than technology. In the US, 18- to 24-year-olds use the web differently from other consumers. They are significantly more likely to blog, read blogs, podcast, instant-message and share music, among other online activities.

These younger consumers, who grew up with the Internet, behave differently than older consumers.

Another cultural consideration is status in life. Many older consumers already have amassed stuff and have more sense of ownership being proprietorship, which could make them more likely to cling to the desktop than younger folks.