I was reading a very interesting article on TechCrunch about Facebook becoming the next Microsoft (as in OS).

The concept of having a web OS is not that hard to understand. Think having a browser, regardless of it running on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. You have a browser and in the browser, you log into a website, for example, Facebook.

In that website of the future, you check your emails, calendar events, develop applications, create documents, share files, edit videos, etc, everything you do today in your Windows or Mac machine, you do it inside the browser. That means your operating system becomes irrelevant since everything is inside the browser and the browser runs on all platforms.

Get the idea? This website is now your OS. So Facebook wants to become your OS of the future. But is this a new concept? Nope! Way back in 1999, a little company known as MyInternetDesktop.com wanted to do the same thing. Guess who was the founder of that company…yes…yours truly.

Don’t believe me? Check out this article form October 14, 1999 or this article or this one about our API. Sounds like Facebook?

The concept is not new, what’s new is that people are ready to accept this since most of us already perform the majority of our day to day activities inside web applications (e.g. Web email, Google Apps, Social Networks, IM, etc.)

However, I don’t agree with TechCrunch’s assessment that Facebook may become the next Microsoft. I think there is way too much competition and it’s much easier to start a web company today then it was to start an OS company back in the 80’s, so if anything, I think we will have lots of choices.

The key to make this successful, though, is to have an API that is compatible with all the web sites so that applications could be used in a variety of social networks.

We’ll see how the future pans out. Looks good though!