Internet is really coming of age

Looking at today’s internet reminds me of desktop computers two decades back. In that era most of the applications were proprietary. Very few developer api’s were available. A few programming languages available but tools for debugging, testing, performance, and maintenance were hard found. Then in 90’s Microsoft made the desktop computing mainstream by launching Windows95. And computers became a lot more useful!! One of the key reasons yet underemphasized is the new developer tools that came along with Win9x. These tools enabled new applications which resulted in new and interesting applications, which resulted in wider adoption of computers and Microsoft. It was a self feeding cycle.
Similarly, what Microsoft had done to desktop computing, Google is doing to Internet. Just like Microsoft, Google enabled the internet with its search technology and made internet much more useful. People could find information. Since people could find information, businesses found web presence mandatory and not just as something “nice to have”. I seriously doubt the hype of current blogging, usenet, forum, internet news, etc. as effective as today if the people did not have a way to find that information (need for a search engine). But search is what I would equate to launch of Windows95. The internet developer tools are still in infancy. People are still more focused on hosting pages rather than making sense of all the information that is already available. To enable that, in coming years, there would be a launch a plethora internet development tools and api’s. With these tools, new applications will spawn and so will new businesses. So, what am I getting at?
a) I would say in the coming years the internet would be controlled/dominated by companies which are able to market its web api’s and developer tools. The web usage will grow less in terms of hosted web pages but access will be more web-api based. For example, Google api (OpenSocial, Search Api, etc.), Amazon’s apis (Amazon WebServices & Mechanical Turk), IBM’s Lotusphere, Microsoft Passport, etc.
b) Second, would be. Who can gather the data best? Who can gather the most amount of data? The best data gatherer would have a competitive advantage. And lastly,
c) the third would be which company is able to make sense of old & new data. Just hosting data is not going to be enough. Transforming data will be important. Or Analytics will gain more & more importance in time to come.