Another Kind of Scaling

Joel captures the anti-institutional aspect of Web 2.0, although he hasn't expressed it this way.

First, Joel on Microsoft...

If I were Bill (Gates), I think I'd fire about three quarters of the people working on that (the presentation system). Not because they are incompetent. But because there are too many people creating too many technologies.

Compare with the Web 2.0 paradigm, e.g. Basecamp...

Aren’t big payrolls and large head counts Web 1.0?

Back to Joel, this time on Google...

One of the mistakes Google is making is applications like Gmail are great on the Google platform. But if Google was really paying attention, they'd say we have to have outside developers writing applications for Google. There should be 27 different e-mail systems using the Google infrastructure.

And finally, Joel on other Web 1.0 institutions...

Nobody's ever going to use SharePoint in college. Ever. So no startup is ever going to use SharePoint because none of the kids who leave college are going to know it. This was BEA's big problem. Kids in college, when they want to learn about Web development, they learn Perl, PHP, maybe Microsoft's (ASP.Net) stack. They don't learn about Domino or BEA...

It's weird Microsoft doesn't recognize this with things like SharePoint and InfoPath. .. the only way those guys [BEA, MSFT, etc.] have hope of getting mind share in the market is to have an extensive sales force.