As Web 2.0 ’s popularity is skyrocketing,people are using the web to do things that they did more often on their desktop.Google plays a major role in this web 2.0 revolution.Earlier people who used mail clients like thunderbird have now found satisfaction in gmail which has keyboard shortcuts,folders and almost all the things you get on a mail client.People who used MS office,Openoffice,koffice etc are slowly moving to the refreshingly dynamic google documents which allows you not only to create your presentations and spreadsheets but also to share them with a click of a button.Google reader also serves as a good replacement for a desktop feed reader.Also there are web-based im-messengers,music players and much more.
So,the browser is the new OS which u can say boots up when u click the browser icon on your desktop and the work begins.With the growing popularity of cloud computing and the plethora of browsers in the race the OS in a browser or rather a web based browser is close to erasing the thin line between the present and the future of next-gen computing.
This also may lead to a new unexpected change in the world of computing that is the OS popularity may go down.The trend of the OS market will change drastically as people will shift to opensource Operating Systems more as an user will think “If my whole work starts and ends within the browser why should I spend 400 $ on an OS?”.Linux again is getting web 2.0 friendly and if it keeps going on the same track the desktop market share stats may turn around.Examples of the same can be seen in the new twitter app in KDE 4 and online desktop in fedora.But you never know with the microsoft.
