I continue to wonder, after the seed was planted by Jeff Jarvis a few episodes ago on "This Week in Google," if "the app" is indeed the new operating system. Jeff also points out that apps are changing the open web, because they are closed and thus not searchable by Google, Bing or Yahoo.
At the same time I myself have been using more web apps on my iPhone. Both Google and Yahoo offer excellent web-based mail tools, and I've also been using a number of other Google products (I mostly use productivity tools like calendaring, docs, reader, etc.) simply as web apps. I came by this because I was simply trying to find a way to configure the iPhone's email client to have a proper reply-to address that didn't use the default gmail.com or yahoo.com address. I couldn't figure this out, and briefly considered MobileMe, before realizing that Google and Yahoo's email web apps work better than fine.
More and more, I'm using simple Home Screen bookmarks to use web apps (or my own web app hacks) for bookmarking things to Delicious, etc., and I think that web apps engender a more integrated web experience.
Last night I stopped by the (I think first-ever?) Google Buzz meetup in San Francisco. There weren't a lot of folks there - about 8 actually - but they hadn't really promoted it. The modest size of the event did give me great access to Punit Soni, the lead product manager for Google mobile apps and mobile Buzz. I shared my thoughts on how I thought people should use mobile apps more, that they often worked better and dovetailed better into the web experience.
Punit said (I'm paraphrasing) that he hoped in the future people wouldn't even use the phrase "web app" and that if you needed to use a service on a mobile device, you would just go to that URL just as you do on a laptop/desktop.
A few other guys reminded me about the Chrome app store that was announced at Google I/O and would be out soon.
One of the other problems, I think, is that Apple doesn't currently allow web apps in the iTunes App Store (even free web apps). I don't know if it's by design to keep web apps out or not, but this would be one way to get more publicity for good web apps. Apple does have a web apps page, but ironically it's not configured for my iPhone Safari browser.
Dane Golden
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