Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Webaroo

ooooooooo....
This is interesting. Defnitely worth a post. (Beware this post is without actually using Webaroo, yet).

So what is Webaroo?
Simply put - the web on your machine (or in your hand). But what's that you say - you already have the web in your machine? But what when you are not connected to the net - do you still have the web in your hand? That's the void that Webaroo aims to fill.
The classic debate would be (as Om Malik puts it on GigaOM) between storage and bandwidth (usage, presence, connectivity) and Webaroo is betting on storage getting cheaper at a faster rate than bandwidth.
Will this work sell? Oh wait it is free. Let's reword the question "Will it become popular?". This definitely will generate a lot of interest. And am sure a lot of people are going to try it out.
In a lot of ways this makes sense - picture this scenario: At work your computer (or laptop / handheld) is connected to the net (always on). Webaroo uses this time to sync up the content cached on your machine with the real world (how it does this is an interesting reading at http://www.webaroo.com/rooTech.html), and then when you are on the road or at home or wherever - you can browse the web even when you are not connected.

So how does Webaroo plan to make money ? The same way that Google does. If you are not sure how Google makes money google adsense...

Will this be discouraged by Service Providers and encouraged by Storage Manufacturers? I think this augurs well for both. This is definitely not going to reduce your bandwidth consumption. On the contrary it is going to increase it (actually it will increase bandwidth consumption of your employer - and that's where I see this causing some problems). Employers are either going to have to block this - or setup Webaroo servers within the organizations. The bandwidth requirements for keeping the data in sync is going to be huge.
In so many ways this has been attempted at so many levels - "caching". Web proxies cache it - your browser caches it - so what's different this time? If you thinks this is going to succeed check out some of the comments on /. They are really hillarious!
If this is to succeed - then Webaroo has to go the enterprise way - tie up with corporates so that they implement support for this and setup Webaroo servers within. This is going to be very crucial.

More on this later (when I actually start using/trying it out).


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, interesting concept. Here is an interesting article on this:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/5388&ts

Looks like their Seattle office is located very near to where I stay.

Anonymous said...

GDU, congrats on your blog!!

Finally you have an online presence, which is more than can be said for most of us, me included.