Brad Neuberg, Google Gears, and the Future of the Web

Linux.com has an interesting look at Google Gears and one of its leading evangelists, Brad Neuberg. "For Neuberg -- as for most developers -- the idea of expanding the Web's capabilities is intriguing in itself. But both inside and outside Google, his argument is that there's more at stake than just a particular piece of technology. In fact, he does not even seem particularly concerned whether Gears or some rival project takes on the role he envisions. What matters, he says, is that finding a solution to the problems of the Web is essential not only to the continued evolution of the Web, but also to its continued freedom. "

Comments

Re:Google vs. Ajax

[vux984]

After several years of deployment, Google Maps still displays incorrectly in Firefox 2 if you spin the scroll wheel too fast. That's about where window refresh was at Microsoft Windows 2.x or so - broken.

AJAX is a method to shoehorn functionality into a trifecta of legacy platforms that was never really designed for it. Like retrofitting a horseless carriage with a honda civic engine and bolting on some wings, a rudder, and a propeller with the intent to fly across the atlantic.

Just because you've gotten it to fly doesn't mean you've invented a modern aircraft.

Re:Why does the web need to evolve

[grumbel]

USENET did not have to evolve, Did not have to evolve? Because it didn't evolve we are now stuck with dozens of web forums with proprietary data storage and no way to retrieve posts other then the HTML interface. Yeah, I know USENET still exist, but pretty much everything these days happens on either mailing lists or web forums which both lack a lot of features that USENET had back then 20 years ago.

When you don't evolve stuff you have a very good chance to end up with a whole bunch of ugly ad hoc fixes.