Blog Entry: Tim O'Reilly took the stage with Bill Gates at Microsoft's Mix06 conference to challenge the software kingpin on his Web services strategies.Well, this was sort of like seeing a jousting match where neither of the jousters ever hit each other. Some good questions from O'Reilly, some good dodges from Bill.
Below is a partial transcript, mostly paraphrasing, of what the two industry thought leaders had to say to each other.
O'Reilly: "We're here because I'm the guy who launched 100,000 blog posts and VC pitches with this concept of Web 2.0, you guys call it Live services." O'Reilly wants to talk about lightweight methods as opposed to Microsoft's relatively robust products.
Google maps was the first mashup platform, and that didn't use these heavyweight formats.
Gates: You need robustness, cover all the bases. As you scale into a more complex system, like customer transactions. The experimentation and excitement will always be there with quick things like [Google Maps]...In a lot of cases, you just want to do simple presentation overlays. That's an important use case.
TO: Internet is evolving as an operating system. Parallel with evolution of the PC. Back then, a lot of competing ideas. Now data is becoming subsystems. How is that evolving as an operating system? Is it like Win32, a master system that makes it easy for developers?
Gates: Some of both. You can call whatever service you want, you need.
TO: Multiple vendors providing services? Because Win32 was like "one ring to rule them all."
Gates: Well I wouldn't say that. Services will complete in components. Hopefully our simplicity will be a choice.
Read the rest of the transcript on Steve Bryant's Intermedia blog.
