There is no "too big to fail". There was a little financial incident in a small north american country some time ago, where some "too big to fail" institutions failed. I've already heared some teens don't like Facebook anymore because mom and dad are also there.
What changes is the web framework style. Asynchronous page loading provides a smoother experience compared to refreshing the whole page. Gmail and Thunderbird will be increasingly similar. Just that one is in a sandbox called browser and the other's sandbox is called operation system.
Indeed, there is no such thing as too big to fail, however you can say of certain companies that they are too big to fail easily. Facebook was once small and fragile. Not anymore.
What changes is the web framework style
The changes are a lot deeper than that. The web is increasingly against sharing, against cooperation, against standards.
The semantic web dream is dying, replaced by web versions of Microsoft Exchange.
Web sites/applications just try to be as user-friendly as possible. Unfortunately, stuff like RSS/Atom is not user-friendly compared to Follow/Like/Friend. HTTP GET ist not user-friendly compared to AJAX page changes. Providing open interfaces and standards is additional work, without obvious benefits for companies and most users don't care.
This semantic web dream you talk about--what is it? Nobody is selling this to ordinary people. All i see of "Semantic Web" guys, are baroque XML snippets (FOAF, RDF, etc) and mumbo jumbo about namespaces and ontologies.
What a nightmare! Hey guys, we are we so pessimistic these times? We should fight instead.
- Facebook is annoying but you want to keep in touch? Use one of the many tools allowing you to receive your fiends baby pics without opening Facebook. If no tool suits you, hack another one! (I would love a command line fb, by the way)
- Tired of shitty web apps that lost the pure HTTP way and mess with click events? Find or hack an extension that shut them down. If too badly bad, pull on the black hat and make a fuck of that.
- Lack of inspiration? Read again pg's essays, it fuels one with renewed inspiration.
What changes is the web framework style. Asynchronous page loading provides a smoother experience compared to refreshing the whole page. Gmail and Thunderbird will be increasingly similar. Just that one is in a sandbox called browser and the other's sandbox is called operation system.