HP is marketing a new printer that has a built in web browser, it’s called the HP Photosmart Premium TouchSmart Web All-in-One Printer. What sets this printer apart from the rest is that it has a “web browser” in it.
Regardless, the implications for the future are pretty clear. It’s very likely that everything that we use in the future will have a web browser built into it. Just as the Java mavens at Sun predicted. If everything that we use has a web browser then what becomes the point of having a PC as a standalone device? The biggest danger of course, is when your plasma screen TV also has a functional web browser that allows you to access your e-mail, your favorite news, and your voicemail messages what incentive do you have to invest in a virus prone PC that easily already is a fairly large intrusion in our life in that we have to wait for it to boot and shutdown before we can actually do something. So imagine how hard we will be tempted to use it to purchase that coffee we like when we can just touch the screen on the refrigerator and accomplish the same thing.
For the longest time the major computer players have invested millions and millions of dollars in winning the browser wars. Even to this day each major player has their own flavor of browser that they want you to use. While they have scrambled and fought and scratched and clawed for mindshare in that market space, what if the browser itself has achieved ubiquity in a standard form that is easily created and marketed. When that happens, and clearly it is happening, the player who has the most significant investment in computing that requires only a web browser has the advantage. Suddenly, having the coolest or most functional hardware and software that runs locally becomes increasingly irrelevant to getting the day to day work done.
The other problem becomes the major stakeholders in the monolithic systems that have lost their relevancy will feel the pain as the market of their vendor shrinks the cost of the legacy systems will surely increase - creating even greater opportunity for the smaller more lithe organizations that grew up adopting and implementing browser-based cloud computing.
The current price point for anything that seems to connect to the Internet is currently around $300 whether it be a printer with a web browser, a smart phone, or a photo frame with 8O2 .11G. As the demand for a touch screen that also has the ability to display HTML5 standard web pages dramatically increases and the standard stabilizes, you’ll see the price point drop to as low as a $75.00 component and in many many products. Expect your next car, tv set, and possibly clothes dryer to be surf friendly. When that happens, Google will probably be in a unique position to serve the needs of this new environment. So if you’re currently deciding what tech toys you should spend some time learning and getting cozy with it’s probably a good idea to give a hard look at the apps are being developed in the Googlesphere.
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