The Top 10 Reasons Web Desktops Are a Bad Idea

It seems like every couple of months a new Web desktop comes along and somehow grabs a whole bunch of press and blog activity (guess I’m not helping in that respect).  This week it’s YouOS, developed by several MIT grads.  The difference between YouOS and the rest, it seems is that they have more of the traditional desktop functionality such as installers, API’s, settings, program groups, etc, etc.

When Web desktops first came out, I thought they were kind of cool, and I played with a few, although I didn’t really like any.  I basically just wanted a fancy RSS aggregator, and a place to look at my Gmail.  I’ve since given up on that idea and have gone back to Google homepage and reader.

That being said, why am I starting to hate Web desktops?

1. Why?  What’s the point?  I already have several desktops that work just fine.  They meet no need I currently have.
2. They complicate instead of simplify.  Just looking at my screen right now there are about 50 icons staring at me, do I really need 50 more on top of that?
3. It’s yet another fragmentation of my online identity.  I posted about this a while back, and it’s just getting worse.
4. They’re currently very buggy, slow, and generally not ready for prime time.  This is fixable but it’s a big problem.
5. What am I supposed to do when it goes down?  As I mentioned before, I have no guarantees that the developers know how to construct a scalable application.  It’s great that these guys are from MIT, but what have they done before?
6. How am I supposed to use one of these on a Mobile device?
7. I don’t WANT to deal with installing things, managing configurations, or muck with anything that comes between me and what I’m trying to accomplish when I get on the Internet.  About the most sophisticated the average Internet user gets is saving something to their Favorites, or if they’re really tech-savvy, to Delicious (screw the dots I refuse to type ‘em).
8. As John Udell writes, "the desktop metaphor — with its cluttered surface and overlapping resizable windows — is at best a distraction and at worst an impediment".  A desktop in a browser just isn’t that useful to me.  TDavid said it well: "The YouOS concept at first is amusing to play around with and look at but quickly frustrates… overcoming the sardine-like limitations inside a browser window will be too great for most people."
9. The Windows software model is broken and outdated, this is just an attempt to re-create it on the Web.  Windows will undoubtedly be the last proprietary starting point any of us ever use.  If they open-source this it might be different, but the other points still apply.  They will never make money selling them.  Maybe Google or Microsoft could make money showing ads on them, but they’re probably the only ones big enough to pull it off.  At least one out there is open source, eyeOS, although I haven’t played with it.

10. Here’s the real deal-killer for me:  I don’t want anyone else owning my data, let alone my entire desktop.  If someone is going to hold my data, they’d better be able to give me assurances that they meet some basic security requirements and let me know how to get the data out if they ever go belly-up.

This all looks like technology for technology’s sake to me.  Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.