Where will the Web be in 5 years?

Very interesting question. Question that many bloggers, visionaries, techies, CEOs, VCs etc are frequently think of or discuss about.

My humble and honest answer to the question is "I don't know". Though it is true, this may not be an attractive answer for anybody who would expect one. In the web, there are many thoughts, discussing many different dimensions on and of this topic. Not sure any of those will serve as a crisp answer as well. So I was thinking little bit harder and arrived an answer, which is again "I don't know". But this time with some additional thoughts as below.

Though I couldn't predict, its sure, in the next 5 years, the web won't stay where it is now. I can tell this based on the below facts from my personal experience.

15 Years back : Web was just a topic on trend talk / discussions.

10 Years back : Used the Web for my personal use, like Email, Chat and Search. Buzz words of the time were hotmail, yahoo mail, usa.net mail, msn search, yahoo search.

5 Years back : Banking, online bookings, blogs etc are the new big reasons to use web. Web and its young kid 'Google', already started playing a major role in my career. More than personal reasons, job was the reason to use Web. Many web development frameworks came to existence (like struts, spring etc).

Now : Web's nature is growing in the direction of 'Cloud computing'. Many social networks, online collaboration tools, more organized information in web. High volume of web applications and better communication infrastructures give birth to smart phones, which leads the new way of using the web. From time, weather, email, facebook, twitter, youtube, ... to the high end of GPS, smart phones help with the help of web. New generation of web development frameworks (like jQuery, GWT, Java FX, Flex etc) are emerging and contributing more towards productivity, performance and user experience.


As you can clearly see, Web has evolved in many dimensions from its beginning and it is no more static. My reasons to use web also evolved along with web. Not only the web, the web infrastructure has shown a tremendous growth as well. You get hard drive spaces for less size and less price. Web in mobile devices and smart phones, is promising. Having witnessed this tremendous growth, and though Web seems to have matured in many ways, I believe this pace of growth will continue through next 5 years and will give birth to lot more new generation of web applications. And I guess most of the web may be accessed through mobile devices.