(2021-09-10) Brander Why Did The Web Take Over Desktop And Not Mobile

Gordon Brander: Why did the web take over desktop and not mobile? This is a question about two different disruptions: Why did the web disrupt desktop? (Personal computers → networked computers) Why didn’t the web disrupt mobile? (Networked computers → computers with you everywhere)

The answers are rooted in specific asymmetries within each era. Let’s tackle them in turn.

Why did the web disrupt desktop? (disruptive innovation)

One way to see the web is as an operating system inside of an operating system. The web didn’t start that way—it was just for sharing documents at first—but the web was evolvable.

Experience went from single player to multiplayer

Links made software distribution viral.

The sandbox made software safe.

Business models expanded beyond licensing, to ads and e-commerce.

The web wasn’t great, but it was networked. Network effects eat everything around them.

Why didn’t the web disrupt mobile?

Mobile ate the world. It was a Great Oxidation Event. The question was, could the web survive an oxygen atmosphere?

The iPhone’s native apps were internet apps, sandboxed, and talking HTTP, just like a web app. The iPhone was designed for a world that included the web. The web was not designed for a world that included the iPhone.

the web is a open-standards-based ecosystem. Standards emerge in retrospect, when a problem space is so well-understood that everyone can agree on how it should work.

The iPhone was a completely new thing. It had new hardware with a new interaction model, and required a new OS, new apps, new UI primitives. All of these had to be integrated together, or the product would fail. Imagine trying to align all of that in a standards process

Clayton Christensen addresses this dilemma in the Theory of Interdependence and Modularity. New product categories don’t fit well into existing systems, which evolve around the assumptions of an incumbent product. Getting incumbent stakeholders to restructure themselves around a not-yet-existing product category is hopeless.

Well, but couldn’t the web catch up? A few asymmetries worked against it…

The basis of performance shifted from small binaries to smooth interaction. Smooth interaction is critical for touch-based direct manipulation

Navigation shifted from keyboard to springboard.

Log-in disappeared completely.

Discovery shifted from search to app store.

Business models expanded to IAP, subscriptions, and app purchase.

Security shifted from sandbox to app review.

Where does the web go from here?

Networked software mediates most of our lives. It seems valuable to have at least one networked software platform that isn’t owned. So where does the web go from here?

I’ll offer my sense of the landscape in part 2, next week.