Scenario 2, BrowOS:

Overview

What is the browser now? Is it just an application which you start to entertain yourself, or to do office work, or to watch multimedia, or to start researching for information? If so, then why is it just called a ‘browser’ (from dictionary.com: “a software program that allows the user to find and read encoded documents in a form suitable for display”). Some believe that a browser is more than that. One of those is Microsoft. They believe that the browser can do more than just browsing. That is the reason why they weaved Internet Explorer into their Operating System ‘Windows’. For doing that they have been sued by several other companies, mainly from the European Union. They where even forced to separate Internet Explorer from the Windows Operating System. The funny thing is that when you turn the story around everything seems to be legal. In other words; you can put anything that you like into a browser without anyone complaining. So why not put the whole world in it or the whole universe? All right lets just first start with putting an Operating System in it before digging into rocket science.
This scenario will describe the future of the browser being the Operating System for computers in 2019. This technology shift will divert offline desktop processing opportunities to the online internet environment.

Time line

2010-2013 Digital friends are increasing. Having 500 connections on your Linkedin on Facebook is very normal for the average person between 20-40 years or even 50+. This indicates that truly ‘countries’ are emerging within the internet. If Myspace would have been a country, it would be the world’s 4th or 5th largest company in the world with over 200 millions users. Single identity and open standards are becoming more important.
Browsers are being more and more compatible with each other. The new Microsoft browser has finally given up its standards war with Mozilla and has accepted the web developer’s demands and complies now with the W3C. However internet users are waiting for sometime new. Everyone has outstanding computer hardware not knowing what to do with it. The web browser companies have been fully investing during the financial crisis in R&D. By the end of 2012, Mozilla has launched Firefox 3.0. Firefox 3.0 is still a window to the internet but a little bit different in terms of organizing and browsing the big load of a users favorite websites and information sources. It has become a little something like the iTunes application.

2013-2016 By 2013 more consumers are enjoying larger flat screen monitors above 24” inch, giving them more viewing space on their desktop computers.
Open space and 3D technologies will slowly take over the browsers staged setting of the paper format (see Ted Nelsons Xanadu project). More and more websites are adopting the technology. However, this will lead into hardware performance problems. Computer hardware companies take the opportunity to push their sales in order to keep up with the consumer hardware rush (for the last time in history). By the end of 2016 business and offices are becoming more aware of the open space and 3D technologies of processing information. But they are reluctant in investing in new computer systems.

2016-2019 By 2016/2017, the millennial population will stream into the job market. For companies this means that they have to think about changing their computer systems to the requirements of the millenials. The open space technology of the web has had big influence on the millenials. Most of them have accepted the technology and are comfortable with using it. By 2018 there will be even millenials who are joining company boards or will be managers, making decisions about the company information infrastructure. The open space websites and contents have also a big impact on the technology of the computers and the web browser. The Operating System philosophy of duality is not fitting well with the open space concept. There is a need for an Operating System which is integrated and unified. One which emphasizes the customers needs. The new generation of people are the ones that care much about an easy going life and customization. The Operating System is going to be the internet itself! The focus of the new Operating System is customer centricity and not technology centricity. Eventually open space, and other technologies which are based on fully digital and not paper formats, will win and the Operating System will unify itself with it.
More vendors are going to be specialized in cloud computing technologies offering cheap small computer boxes with just a browser as the main software instead of an Operating System. Because of the low-price, companies will eventually adopt the Browser OS technology into their infrastructure.

Conclusion

Internet as a whole is going to be very important in our daily lives. But especially for browsing, content is going to be the hot topic. This consumer demand will be exploited by content and search providers (Google, Facebook, Myspace etc.) who will eventually take over the control of the internet user’s behaviors (and its needs and requirements). This will result in a strong centralized internet experience. The decentralized computer operating system will disappear and probably be integrated into a browser concept. In fact there are already products launched with a similar concept, like gOS (www.thinkgos.com) which combines Google and content services with a browser OS. But they haven’t been very successful yet. This due the fact that content providers still do not have to the full control over the internet user needs and requirements. The needs and requirements are still based on decentralized information processing mainly because of the older generation who still prefer Microsoft Office, Outlook on Windows XP. Eventually this will slowly change; the younger generation is already massively using Gmail or Hotmail and even combining it with Google Docs and Google Calendar on ‘iGoogle-like’ platforms with Wikipedia, Facebook and Myspace widgets. Thanks to broadband connections, powerful (graphic-) processing can be done remotely and transported over the internet to thin clients. The prediction is even that gaming consoles like the Xbox and Playstation will disappear because consumer are fed up with buying new hardware for the sake of ‘better graphics’. www.onlive.com claims to have the world’s best graphics ever. The thin client box only requires a broadband connection and does not require high-end hardware.
We have seen this pattern in the history of information processing. For example, in the seventies mainframe and terminals where centralized environments. Later in the eighties there was a shift to a more decentralized information processing environment up until now. In the 22nd century we will again see a shift to a more centralized information processing environment which includes the whole internet as its playground.
Developers of Mozilla, Internet Explorer or Safari should reconsider their strategies based on this scenario. The impact for technology is that if this scenario occurs, browser developers should already start thinking how to radically redesign their browsers for open space and 3D technologies as well as building Operating System features into their browsers. Another technology driver is the usage of fiber glass. With more metropolization going on, fiber to the home (FTTH) projects are growing faster than ever. The city of Amsterdam has already started to implement fiber-optic internet connections for every house (400.000 estimate).
Figure 1. sketch of the 2019 scenario, where you boot up your computer via the internet using GoogleOS.