The End of .Mac and Google Apps?

mattnyc99 writes "In his weekly tech column for Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene predicts that everyone will have a home server to network their house within 10 years—rendering Apple's .Mac accounts and Google's productivity software useless. As prices for products like HP's MediaSmart Server drop and as processing power becomes more pervasive, Derene says, 'you'll ultimately need a centralized server—that high-powered traffic cop—to coordinate the non-stop exchange of information between your new multitude of devices.'"

Comments

Re:that's moronic

[Professor_UNIX]

I have a server at home, with over a TB of storage. I still use most of google's apps, especially Gmail.

That's probably just because your ISP doesn't let you run servers on your DSL or cable modem. In the future when everyone moves to IPv6 there will be little to no restrictions imposed. Everyone will have a huge block of static addresses to use instead of having to pigeon-hole everything into a dynamic IPv4 address using NAT kludges. In the future Gmail will be irrelevant because your home server will have an e-mail server and web front-end built into it. Many of us already have this setup already, but in the future it will become as normal as someone having a TiVo or Xbox360 on their network. The days of a third-party provider collecting, indexing, and targeting advertisements to you based on the content of your e-mail will be over.

Re:That's not what TFA says

[kripkenstein]

Indeed, TFA says something completely different than the Slashdot summary. It says that .Mac and Google datahosting are basically the same as a 'home server' solution. Furthermore, it is quickly obvious that the opposite of what TFA says is true: in 10 years, everyone will use a .Mac/Google datahosting solution, and not a home server, since

1. The functionality is essentially the same, given broadband, the only difference being problems when the connection is down. Paying for a physical home server and maintaining it more than offsets that cost.

2. Home users don't have the same misgivings that corporations have with hosting their data remotely, especially if the remote hosting solution is more convenient. And it will be. So essentially the only argument against remote hosting is eliminated for home users.

Google's got the right approach, Microsoft with Home Server will be proven wrong. My 2 cents.

Re:Been there, done that

[stonecypher]

Nothing on TCP has ever needed a central server. Plan 9 is a solution in search of a problem.

It's called the internet. Those who don't understand it are doomed to reinvent it, badly.