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Tim BurdenTim Burden
I'm one of the founders of NewsFIX and its current webmaster...

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Back in 2003, when we webmasters got together in online forums to discuss our trade, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was our constant lament. Internet Explorer didn’t render our websites correctly. IE didn’t do JavaScript right. IE didn’t follow web standards. IE bad. IE sucks.

Microsoft’s market-dominating web browser made a developer’s life harder when, after coding a website according to accepted standards, he had to turn around and throw in seemingly endless hacks and tricks to make the thing work for what was then the other 95 per cent of web users.

Some of us would give up and just build websites for the brute IE-using majority. If it worked for 95 per cent of people, that was good enough. Other geeks would get on a high horse and code to standard, letting idiots who used that inferior browser just piss up a rope. But most of us would bite the bullet and make sure everything worked in every browser. It wasn’t that hard, once you knew some of the tricks, and had already pulled out all your hair. Plus, we could charge more.

Around the same time, Google was well on its way to becoming the search juggernaut it is today. People conducted 30 per cent of all searches on Google and the number was growing fast. And so we couldn’t help but wonder whether, if Google were to get on a high horse and code its websites properly, Microsoft would have to make its browser follow the rules. Our problems would be solved. A new day would dawn. The “code once, run everywhere” ideal would be realized at last.

Today we still hear these same sorrowful cries of outrage. IE is still the most popular browser in the world, and still doesn’t render websites correctly, nor follow web standards, although it is much better now. And Google never did take that high road, for various reasons.

Until last week.

Late last week, Google announced it would no longer support IE6 starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. Developers everywhere beat their chests, held hands and sang Kumbaya. No more box-model hacks! The end of disappearing floats!

But this story isn’t really about Internet Explorer. It is about web standards and walled gardens.

Though Google’s recent choice to stop supporting IE6 shows that it is getting serious about web standards, it has also begun to push HTML5. HTML5 is a web coding standard so new it’s still on the drawing board at the W3C, the consortium that makes web standards. Yet Google already has support for HTML5 at YouTube. It has said it will drop Google Gears and start using HTML5 for applications such as GMail that require local data storage. And Google is aggressively marketing its Chrome browser, which currently offers the best support of any browser for HTML5 video.

You could be cynical and say that Google jumped on Internet Explorer’s recent security woes just to thump on IE some more, and push its own browser. Or you might think they are simply doing what’s right for their web apps by pushing standards that make it easier to develop them. You might be right on both counts.

But it goes much deeper. Google has a really big plan, with far-reaching implications. But first let’s pull on another thread.

Another fairly important tech company - you know, Apple - has implicitly supported web standards and HTML5 since it open-sourced its WebKit browser engine (which powers Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers) back in 2005, and even moreso with its seemingly stubborn refusal to support Flash in iPhone (and now iPad).

The reason for its apparent dislike of Flash is not technical, despite Apple CEO Steve Jobs calling Flash buggy and the biggest source of crashes on Macs. The reason is business: they don’t want developers building Flash apps for iPhones and iPads. They want apps that run natively on those appliances, and are sold through their app store.

At any rate, today there are two really big tech companies pushing towards HTML5 and web standards instead of third-party solutions like Java, Flash and Silverlight. You’d almost think Apple and Google were in cahoots. Except that Jobs reportedly said Google was out to “kill” Apple’s iPhone with Android, and that Google’s “don’t be evil” mantra is “bullshit.”

So what’s going on? Both Apple and Google are pushing toward the widespread adoption of HTML5, but the two companies have very different visions of the future. And they’re fighting.

Let’s start with Apple’s plan, because I think its a little easier to understand. Apple sees the end of general-purpose computers and the start of appliances with computers inside them. You see, computers crash because people load stupid things like Flash and viruses onto them. They’re not simple. They’re for geeks. It’s both too easy and too complicated to run what you want on them.

Instead, Apple wants you to buy context-specific devices such as the iPhone for when you’re in transit and the iPad for lounging in your living room. You can’t wreck them, because you can only load the programs Apple says you can (which you conveniently buy from its app store). The two businesses - apps (or content) and appliances - form a cohesive ecosystem.

Google’s plan is similar, but very different. It wants the web to be your whole desktop. When you boot a device with its Chromium OS, it boots up a browser. Your whole desktop is a browser, with links to Google apps, Google search and the rest of the web. What else could you possibly need? Google needs and thrives on an open web, where it makes billions through advertising.

So Apple is pushing HTML5 because it needs to kill Adobe’s Flash, which is a threat to its app business, which in turn threatens its appliance business. And Google is pushing HTML5 because it needs to loosen Apple’s hold on apps. Google knows Apple’s devices can’t forgo the web, so it can make a case for using its apps on Apple’s shiny happy stuff.

These are vastly different plans. One envisions a closed model where you buy its things and run its closed apps on them.

The other is an open model, which builds on Google’s mission to get all things under the sun out on the web and available for consumption.

It’s walled gardens versus public parks.

Almost coincidentally - but memes are like that - as I wrote this a friend linked me to this Forrester Research study about what they call the Splinternet. It says all non-interoperable devices like Apple’s iPad and Google’s Android, and all the different logins we need for social networking sites, are splintering the web into walled kingdoms.

It says Google search and web advertising and analytics and so on all work because the web is standardized. But…

“Now with iPhones, Androids, Kindles, Tablets, and TVs connecting to the Web, that’s not true. Your site may not work right on these devices, especially if it includes Flash or assumes mouse-based navigation,” it complains.

“Meanwhile, more and more of the interesting stuff on the Web is hidden behind a login and password,” it goes on in a non-sequitur of epic proportions.

Actually, though, the web is becoming less splintered:

1. Two powerful forces are pushing towards HTML5 - towards web standards - not away.

2. HTML5 provides solutions where you don’t need to develop stand-alone apps. Developers therefore say they will stop building apps and just do everything in HTML5.

3. The iPad does the web just fine, thank you very much (except Flash, but that’s on purpose).

4. Once upon a time the “deep web” was a big concern, with much content - some said more than half of what could be available - hidden deep inside databases where search spiders couldn’t reach. But better spiders and sitemap protocols have brought much of this murky web to light.

5. There are fewer paywalls now than there were just two years ago. Remember TimesSelect? That’s one example.

6. Almost everything on Facebook is now publicly accessible by default.

7. Anything that can’t be linked to from the web - apps, or whatever - is by definition not on the web. The web is made of links.

The web - with its ubiquity, openness, near-universal availability and phenomenal size - is going to win this battle. Google will win this battle. But Apple won’t lose either because it supports HTML5 and HTML5 will power the web.

Who are the losers in this battle? Microsoft and Adobe. Because, whoever wins, Microsoft is losing its stranglehold on the desktop, and Adobe its stranglehold on rich web apps and video.

Ironically, Google’s YouTube was what allowed embedded video to become easy, popular and standardized, while it simultaneously ensured Flash would reach nearly 99 per cent adoption at one point - pre-iPhone, at least. But that was before Google owned it, and, I think, before Google had its world-changing plan.

In case there was any doubt about which side I’m taking in the Google/Apple war, a disclaimer of sorts. I am writing this piece in Google Documents, and my editors are editing it there. And I have never owned an Apple appliance, and probably never will. And I have written about my distaste for paywalls and the splintering of the web over here.