Isn’t “Software + Services” just “Pragmatic Computing”

There has been an recent announcement from Google that they have extended GMail to work offline in the browser using Google Gears.  As Steve Clayton points out in the post ‘Google Talks Software plus Services’ this is a great example and endorsement of the Software plus Services (S+S) approach.

I like the S+S approach, the biggest issue I have is the name – it makes it sound like we have tried to invent something.  But is this not just an example of pragmatic computing?  The idea that people will make a choice between having email in the cloud or just locally is utter madness, I would love the know the % of Gmail users that only use the web client vs those that use both web based and software locally.

The future of Cloud computing is very bright, but it will only really shine when we bring together examples of how it can be used across multiple devices consumed by multiple applications.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2009
  There have been a number of events and posts over the last few weeks that have raised issues with the