[Shift] Web

[Warning: this is another, hopefully less boring, technical post!]

While Google Docs will likely never beat out Word or Pages in terms of functionality, there is an obvious industry shift towards web apps from desktop apps (why else would Google Chrome exist). I also see some desktop programs beginning to have their own built-in web interfaces so that they can be controlled across the expanse of the net (it's like running an application-specific mini-server).

This leads me to wonder - will someday all applications have their own web interfaces? (damn, that's a lot of open web ports), will OSes have their own web interfaces?, and will someday we see a trend towards web-only interfaces? Since you can always see a web interface locally, perhaps one day we won't even have traditional GUIs, just site-specific browsers distributed with background daemons.

This could, of course, have some very interesting results. For one, people would be using their computers more like servers - and any machine with internet becomes a thin-client. This could lead to more people buying a desktop machine, and then something like a netbook to go with it. From a development perspective, cross-platform UI design would be over (and cross-bowser issues could be minimized as well, if say an app-specific version of WebKit was included). Also, think of the ability to easily place ads into a program from someplace like Google AdSense.
There ore obviously things that just wouldn't work well with a web interface, like real games. And I would be very wary of the load placed on the associated technologies (even now, Google Docs loves to pound me with slow script warnings).

Just something to think about. And maybe I'll be able to say "I told you so" someday ;) !
Oh yeah, and for the record; I love Mail.app over Gmail.com any day.