Remembering the Future

Interestingly, Adam's journey has taken him from a startup called Analytica to Borland, to Microsoft, through a startup called Crossgain, to BEA, and now to Google; all of them were platform companies -- and it's notable that he hopped from a startup to a languages company, to an operating system platform company, through another startup to an application server platform company, and (now) to a web platform company.

I believe Adam's journey represents the evolution of the software industry over the last two decades: from desktop applications running on single-machines that helped individuals with productivity through word processing and spreadsheets and email, to enterprise applications in corporate data centers that helped workgroups and companies with productivity through automating business processes... and now to collaborative applications available to anyone from anywhere on the Internet, leveraging an increasingly-connected and ever-faster world. The web is the platform that subsumes the others.

The software platform of choice evolved from desktop operating systems, to enterprise operating systems, to what Tim O'Reilly calls the emergent Internet operating system. Which reminds me of Jason Kottke's description of the Google operating system:

Topics: Architecture