dotMAC, Time For A Makeover?
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft... most technology companies are using newer technologies (collectively called Web 2.0) to enhance the consumer experience inside the browser. Apple, however, is yet to incorporate these technologies and enhance the user experience …
Context & Ripple Effects
The question GigaOM raises lands at the end of a cycle that began when 10 issues facing Web 2.0 going into 2006 framed the year's open problems for the emerging browser-as-platform movement. By mid-2006, three of the four big consumer technology companies named in this story — Google, Yahoo and Microsoft — are confirmed to be applying those newer web techniques inside the browser.
dotMac is the outlier: Apple's paid, subscription-based suite still delivers its mail, storage and sharing features without them. The critique circulating on July 9, 2006 is unconfirmed commentary rather than any announcement, but it puts Apple's fee-charging service side by side with rivals giving comparable experiences away in the browser — and asks whether a makeover is due.
First-order effects
- dotMac subscribers are paying an annual fee for a feature set that increasingly trails what Google, Yahoo and Microsoft deliver free inside the browser, sharpening the value comparison at renewal time.
- Apple faces a positioning problem it did not have before the Web 2.0 wave: its service is now benchmarked against free, ad-supported alternatives rather than against other paid bundles.
Second-order effects
- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's accelerating browser work turns their consumer portals into the de facto reference point for what a webmail-and-sharing experience should feel like, forcing Apple either to modernize dotMac or defend it purely on integration and brand grounds.
- If Apple does revamp dotMac, it would be competing for attention on the same browser canvas where its three biggest rivals have a head start and a business model (advertising) that prices the service at zero.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, desktop-tethered paid service bundles like dotMac face structural repricing pressure: as the browser becomes rich enough to host the same features, the willingness to pay for them migrates toward hardware and software margins instead.
- The episode feeds directly into the unresolved Web 2.0 agenda laid out in November 2005 — whether incumbent consumer platforms can absorb the new web paradigm fast enough, or whether native-web companies define the user experience standard first.
The trend: Consumer internet services are consolidating around browser-delivered experiences built on Web 2.0 techniques, leaving paid, desktop-era bundles like Apple's dotMac under growing pressure to justify their subscriptions.