Richard MacManus: “Instead of using the entire product suite of a Google or an MSN or a Yahoo, you [should be able to] use the particular apps you like most from not only big players – but small startups too.”

I agree wholeheartedly. I’m a big believer in the componentization of the web, as I’ve written about before. Without a way to write independent apps that integrate with each other regardless of where they’re hosted, the future starts to look more and more like the mainframe era (albeit with better graphics). The world needs only five computers (shaping up to be Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, Windows Live and Yahoo!). However, we need to ensure that these five computers operate more as computing utilities where a thousand flowers can bloom than as centralized monoliths where the only way to integrate is to be assimilated.