The only reason I was able to make that first post from a Mac with Safari and this one from Linux with Firefox is because of standards. Microsoft has been fighting standards for years because it means they have to compete with other companies.

The browser bundling issue is a red-herring. Microsoft killed adoption of web apps by creating their own standards (MSHTML, ActiveX etc) and then forcing them down everyones throats by bundling. The key issue is the lack of standards with the bundling. Nobody would mind if IE6 was 100% standards compliant and secure and it was bundled, likewise nobody would care if they didn’t bundle a terrible browser.

Look at the recent Opera complaint, the main problem is lack of standards compliance which is made worse by bundling. No wonder Microsoft are going out of their way to support every single item in CSS 2.1, I think the EU is going to start mandating it.

People who fight against standards either don’t easily accept change or they have vested interest in preserving the status quo. Everywhere you look in the real world there are standards so that people can compete on a level playing field, why should our industry be different?

Right now, applications do matter. Last week i was out with friends, one of whom is an accountant. He got an urgent phone call from a client, to which he responded by transferring money between accounts using his iPhone. I can’t do anything like that on my Nokia N96. As Apple marketing asserts: “There’s an app for that.” If you have an iPhone.

Applications matter in Web 2.0, but the cloud matters more in Web 3.0. Or should.

It is also an open standard which Microsoft finds it very hard to compete against.

I really hope Microsoft do adopt it, then we can have some transparent competition in the market instead of every business being tied to one Microsoft format or another.

Joe, I think you are concentrating way too much on the Mobile side of \’Web 3.0\’ – the fact that you can use these products on any device means that the OS is becoming irrelevant, I think it might be happening much quicker than anyone thinks. Mobiles are great but I cannot see an entire company working from them. Anywhere, on any device means desktops, laptops and mobiles but they do not have to run Windows.

As for Bing, it’s still not available to me. But from the screenshots, I’m quite impressed by the UI.

Since the overall look and feel or framework is very similiar in design to Outlook, a competitive feature set could be included in Outlook by 2013 or sooner if Google Wave scares Microsoft deeply enough.

Microsoft already has a competitive advantage since Windows Live also already incorporates many of the features Facebook offers and it shouldn’t be to difficult to tie these into Outlook.

If there is anything I have learned about Microsoft, it’s that they know how to react when threatened. My opinion is that Outlook, needs a competitor, and this will give us the kind of motivation they need to create the innovation it has lacked for quite some time now.