Same ole IWE
Of course, the Hordes are no longer there to act as a counterbalance.
Personally, I think that the magazines love these machinations, as the prognostication is the only thing that makes them seem like they know what they're talking about. Never been good at explaining what's important as of today's technology (much less any sense of history). Looking into the crystal ball though is just an opinion formulated with supporting facts. IWE would like nothing better than to get back into the hype business, as it elevates their importance in the industry.
That said, what I took out of the article is the things MS is planning on not doing. They are not going down the web standards path and they are not going to improve their browser. I view it as a bait and switch scheme by MS. Build the best browser; give it away for free; destroy the competition; get a monopoly; and then move on to the next agenda (Java is the obvious target). MS thinks they own the end of the pipeline, having extinquished the threat of the browser, and now is going to try and worm it's way through the rest of the pipe.
As for the specific Longhorn junk. Indigo (SOAP) is a mess of a protocol (a kludge all the way down). WinFS is the Registry carried to it's logical conclusion (and totally fuxed). Avalon is only interesting as a mutation of Java that tries to get a Windows lockin by building a higher performance GUI.
