[development] google just pwned the brochureware site industry

[Benson Wong]

On 2/23/06, Laura Scott <laura at pingv.com> wrote:
>  This comes down to the question of whether the disruptive technologies and
> economies of this new era can truly compete with the centralized megacorp
> models.

What do you mean by this?
Is Drupal considered a distruptive technology?
What makes it disruptive? (I've been living under a rock for a while...)

> We're seeing the big corporations having a big problem adapting to
> the fast microchanges in the long tail economy -- which is where most
> industries are heading.
>

Including the economical side Drupal. Consider the people who do full
time Drupal consulting. Consider Bryght, Lullabot, CivicSpace. I think
these people and companies are servicing that "long tail", basically,
small to medium sized business that have a three to five figure budget
for their website.

>  Google may buy some time by offering a Google CMS, but I think ultimately
> the people who go for that are the people who are not considering Drupal now
> -- they WANT a hosted, managed, just-tell-me-what-to-do system. Drupal is on
>

Psst...bryght.com.

> the opposite end of the paradigm, and appeals to different people who think
> differently than those who want the corporate-sponsored service.
>
>
>  Who uses AOL and who puts their internet services together themselves?
>  Who blogs on Blogger and who downloads Wordpress or MT (or Drupal!) and
> does it themselves?
>
>
>  What Google does certainly is worth noticing, given how huge they are. But
> I truly wonder at how a megacorp can compete in a marketplace that's all
> about personal empowerment, which is where we, in all our Drupal-related
> niches, live.

I think you need to make a distinction between what kind of personal
empowerment you're talking about.

Drupal does not empower the majority of the public, it's too hard to
use. It empowers programmers and systems integrators.

Blogger, Pages, Typepad, that empowers the general public. People who
are very intelligent and skilled in something other than web
application installation. There are way more of these people than PHP
programmers and sysadmins.

Competing with Blogger and Typepad isn't really what Drupal is about.
Leave that to companies like Bryght.

Drupal development should be focused on solutions, on buildling the #1
OS CMS. I honestly think we're almost there. Add in i18n support, make
it easier to use, and we got a world class product.

Ben.