The WinZip Problem

At some point WinZip was on every Windows computer I sat at. It needed to be, because that was the only way to handle .zip files. Windows did not have built in handling of zips.

These days you don't find WinZip installed. Once Windows added zip support, there wasn't a reason to manually download it. This has happened many times. Microsoft blew Netscape out of the water by putting Internet Explorer on everyone's desktops. Microsoft made Lotus obsolete with Excel. Google made MapQuest a joke with Google Maps. AOL, once the mighty dialup ISP was made inconsequential by the market. At first it was Friendster, then it was MySpace and now it's Facebook.

With the announcement of RC33 which I spoke about in my last post, Google has made the first shot, which might turn out to be the last shot on a very new industry with their introduction of Google Latitude.

This service will most likely crush Loopt and other Location Mapping services that have sprung up in the last few months. Google's introduction into this market is going to make their services second class. It's a shame, but it's not unexpected. There are many natural services that fit into Google Maps. An interesting tidbit, as far as Loopt goes, is that they were using Google Maps as their mapping engine.

It's happened before, and it will happen again. If your application isn't legally protectable, if it gets large enough, one day someone will just put you out of business.