WebRTC is to messaging/socket communication APIs as WebGL is to 3D graphics APIs? So big game changer is that web browsers will implement functionality that native applications have had for decades? I don't understand this obsession of running everything inside a web browser with HTML and JavaScript and then declaring it as some kind of revolutionary step forward. What we want to do as developers is make it easy and secure to run applications on end-user desktops. Web browsers are the dominant delivery platform right now (for consumer applications anyway) but that does not mean that it will always be this way or that it is the optimal solution. There are a lot of W3C standards ... are they all really so great? Does anyone remember VRML?
A central idea of this article is that<p>>Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook are truly the new telecoms—each within the last few years has built or bought a communication platform of their own.<p>Some aspects of this analogy are true, but it's weak overall. Telecom is an extremely capital intensive business. Online messaging is not.* As a result, if telecom companies screw you over, it's hard for a startup to replace them. With online messaging, if a service screws you over, it's relatively easy to switch to a new standard/provider. That feedback mechanism should hopefully keep the messaging platforms better than the telecom platforms.<p>*and yes, online messaging runs on lots capital, but the capital - fiber lines and whatnot - is already pretty open