Mon

Jul 25
2005

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

Yahoo! Buys Konfabulator

I know this storyis all over the news, especially on Mac sites, but I wanted to call it out for another reason: as with the Google purchase of Keyhole, this is a purchase of a desktop software company by a web software company. I see these purchases as signs of that long term platform shift that I've been calling Web 2.0.  

I predicted this kind of thing in my open source paradigm shift talk at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention back in 2003, with the intentionally "out there" prediction that eBay would one day be in a position to buy Oracle. We're not that far along the curve yet, but the expectation that web companies will only buy other web companies should be put firmly into the trash bin.

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Comments: 2

  Chaim Krause [07.25.05 04:52 PM]

Funny you should mention this. I email Jon Udell about such a shift just last Wednesday:


>Subject: Sorry for the spam
>From: Chaim Krause
>Date: Wed, July 20, 2005 8:47 pm
>To: judell@gmail.com

>Last email for the night. I promise.
>But I just had (what I thought) was an
>interesting idea for an experiment.
>Would it be possible for an "average"
>user, to include your "average" office
>worker, to shutdown all applications,
>including taskbar apps, only run a web
>browser full screen, and for one week
>do all your work in that browser. Use
>online services or browser extensions
>for everything. No stand-alone MS
>Office. No Skype. No Photoshop. Just
>web services and browser extensions.
>Is "Are we there yet?" a viable
>question? That implies such a system
>would be desirable. Would it be?

  Scott Kindorf [12.17.05 04:31 AM]

Sadly, Yahoo has denied access to Konfabu...oops...Yahoo! Widget Engine to *anyone* running Windows XP Professional x64. The problem is that Yahoo! programmers have seen fit to add the WinHTTP library to Y!WE, and since Microsoft has discontinued support for WinHTTP as of September 4th, 2004 and does not and apparently *will not* have a 64-bit version of WinHTTP.


The whole problem with this was users reporting that while running the new version of Y!WE under WinXP x64 that many of their widgets no longer functioned or exhibited "weird" behaviors not experienced in previous releases. Yahoo! staff attributed this to the inclusion of the WinHTTP library in their own forums, specifically in relation to problems experienced by users of Windows XP Professional x64.


It appears now that Yahoo! has resolved these issues by virtually DEMANDING that Windows XP Professional x64 users have a library installed that is not and apparently will not be available to these users.


My suggestions: Boycott Yahoo! and their affiliate sites. If you can find the first Yahoo!-branded release or previous releases of Konfabulator, download it and use it - the widgets available will work fine. The other solution: Abandon Yahoo!'s butchered product and go to Stardock's DesktopX.

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