Was 2007 the year of Web based Apps or not

22.15 in 2007, apps, based, not, of, or, the, was, web, year

In the interest of expanding a bit beyond my usual printer industry beat, keeping in mind that other forces in the tech universe actually drive what we print, I highlight a great blog post from the other day from one of my favorites, ReadWriteWeb.com, entitled "Consumer Apps: 2007 Year in Review". A later post at the same site, along with another very insightful one from one of my other favorite blogs, Techdirt, drills down on the recent "disappointing" survey results on awareness and adoption of Web-based office applications, most notably Google (NASDAQ GOOG) Docs.

As regular readers will recall, Ive been interested in this area, especially when it comes to their abilities (or lack of abilities) in printing (for an example of my analysis and light-touch review see, most recently, "Web-based Application Printing -- Google Presentations".)

I agree with Mike Masnick at Techdirt and Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWrite, in that mounting a bona fide campaign to truly compete, market-share-wise, with Microsoft Office will take years and years, and those "disappointing" takes on the data are from the impatient and naive (and Ive been known to be both, myself, from time to time!)

See "The Death Of Online Office Suites Is Greatly Exaggerated" and "First, Put Your SKU in a Box: Will Web Office Apps Ever See Widespread Adoption?". Highly recommended!