The cloud is a beautiful place, even and despite the war. What war, you ask? Why, the war that’s happening between Google, Microsoft, and Apple. While Google and Microsoft are primarily fighting for cloud-based productivity software, Google and Apple are fighting a battle with a broader applicability: the battle for service-based apps. Beyond determining the foothold of each group, this cloud warfare may determine what the cloud of 2020 looks like.
The two cloud services are based on very different concepts and seem to be making different predictions about the trajectory of the cloud on the whole. For Google, the cloud is an entirely web-reliant thing. Your device can (and will, in the case of Google Chrome OS) serve as nothing more than the display and processing platform for services, apps, and so forth, that are taking palceon a server a long ways away. What’s stored is minimal.
That choice is a lot of things. It’s more secure, for one, since so little is based on your individual device. It’s server-intensive for another. It’s also gentle on your device. But it’s also – for many people – less stable. Since we have limited internet access, Apple’s iCloud is going to give more stability. Its more device-oriented lineup of cloud-assisted features lets users continue with application use even after internet access slows or drops.
Since Apple is hosting the web apps locally and using their servers primarily for backup and synchronization, they’re less “cloud” than Google. Don’t let that worry you too much; all cloud services are at least partially device-dependent. But Apple has strayed far more toward devices as opposed to servers. If Apple wins the cloud war, we’re likely to see a similar trend of local storage – with its lower security and lack of web-access dependence. If Google wins, we’re likely to see more secure devices that rely on powerful servers and fast internet access to work properly.
Who do you want to have win?
[via Google Watch]
