I'm sorry, but why do you think Google and AWS are the best we can do?
We have to rely on Google to "not be evil". A lot of businesses depend on traffic from google, and if it decides to cut them off, well too bad. Many governments including the US government constantly look into google to prevent a monopoly. You want a monopoly in search? And how about the direction of where your hosted software will go ... when Larry Page took the reins, he decided that Google+ should feature prominently in every product. I agree with him but others may not. And what about killing off Google reader just like that? Do you think people come to rely on these things and then the centralized company can just kill the product?
And as for building stuff "in the cloud", what happens when your AWS availability zone goes down? Lots of big internet sites go down. Centralization on the internet also got us facebook, and when facebook goes down or shuts off a site, "Connect with Facebook" doesn't work on that site anymore until they fix it.
(responding to your edit) As for the iPad, etc. ... yes, the original platforms are usually proprietary walled gardens, but eventually the tech gets commoditized (sometimes after a protracted software patent fight). Rather than expound on it here, you can read my complete thoughts on multiple app stores and reputations: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114
NOW THE DISCLAIMERS:
I will admit, that Google is also full of extremely bright people and does awesome stuff with all the money it makes. Self-driving cars, google glasses, and much more. But you are still relying on Google to maintain its data liberation and open technologies, and to some extent their commitment has lessened.
Also, Amazon's impressive commitment to low margins is a net win for all of us consumers (including the developers). At the scale that Google and Amazon build, a lot of amazing research is possible. That is the upside of centralization. And I am not saying that we should "abolish" centralized services. Especially the ones which are open and have great tools.
What I AM saying is that the open source foundations need to step up their game and produce SERVERS that are user friendly and easy to install, maintain and run. This new generation of servers should automatically link together. I really do believe that at the end of the day, history has shown that open PLATFORMS lead to the greatest good for humanity, as everyone can build apps on top of them without favoritism. For example Apple's iOS favors twitter and facebook sharing over any other companies, because they made a deal with them. There needs to be competition between the "centralized sector" and the "open source sector", which will lead to the server software becoming commoditized and more user friendly, just as browsers are today.
> I'm sorry, but why do you think Google and AWS are the best we can do?
Please don't set up a straw man. You seem to be claiming that I'm arguing in favor of complete centralization. I'm not.
Google and AWS both need competitors.
That also doesn't mean that we as a society haven't benefitted monumentally from Google and AWS existing.
Centralization has vast benefits. We should not discount those simply because it also makes a juicy target for evildoers. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say "this is the fault of centralization".
Your approach works and benefits people even if we as an industry continue to primarily build centralized services (and we will, because it is tremendously more cost-effective). I encourage you to pursue it in parallel.
I think we're saying the same thing. As I mentioned, I am NOT saying centralization doesn't have benefits -- I even mentioned some major ones, including having enough money to do awesome R&D and move humanity forward. What I am saying is that open source foundations need to step up their game, and build servers that automatically talk to each other, are easy to install, maintain, and are user friendly. Kind of like the new WebRTC P2P client/servers.
We have to rely on Google to "not be evil". A lot of businesses depend on traffic from google, and if it decides to cut them off, well too bad. Many governments including the US government constantly look into google to prevent a monopoly. You want a monopoly in search? And how about the direction of where your hosted software will go ... when Larry Page took the reins, he decided that Google+ should feature prominently in every product. I agree with him but others may not. And what about killing off Google reader just like that? Do you think people come to rely on these things and then the centralized company can just kill the product?
And as for building stuff "in the cloud", what happens when your AWS availability zone goes down? Lots of big internet sites go down. Centralization on the internet also got us facebook, and when facebook goes down or shuts off a site, "Connect with Facebook" doesn't work on that site anymore until they fix it.
(responding to your edit) As for the iPad, etc. ... yes, the original platforms are usually proprietary walled gardens, but eventually the tech gets commoditized (sometimes after a protracted software patent fight). Rather than expound on it here, you can read my complete thoughts on multiple app stores and reputations: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=114
NOW THE DISCLAIMERS: I will admit, that Google is also full of extremely bright people and does awesome stuff with all the money it makes. Self-driving cars, google glasses, and much more. But you are still relying on Google to maintain its data liberation and open technologies, and to some extent their commitment has lessened.
Also, Amazon's impressive commitment to low margins is a net win for all of us consumers (including the developers). At the scale that Google and Amazon build, a lot of amazing research is possible. That is the upside of centralization. And I am not saying that we should "abolish" centralized services. Especially the ones which are open and have great tools.
What I AM saying is that the open source foundations need to step up their game and produce SERVERS that are user friendly and easy to install, maintain and run. This new generation of servers should automatically link together. I really do believe that at the end of the day, history has shown that open PLATFORMS lead to the greatest good for humanity, as everyone can build apps on top of them without favoritism. For example Apple's iOS favors twitter and facebook sharing over any other companies, because they made a deal with them. There needs to be competition between the "centralized sector" and the "open source sector", which will lead to the server software becoming commoditized and more user friendly, just as browsers are today.