Nicholas Carr writes:
That term is being used, with increasing frequency (and, naturally, decreasing specificity), to describe a new generation of personal productivity applications – the would-be successors to the component applications of the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. Office 2.0 applications are delivered as services over the internet, running in most cases within the user’s web browser. Many such “web apps” are already available, ranging from Google’s Writely word processor to Dan Bricklin’s wikiCalc spreadsheet program to Zoho’s Show presentation creator. They are, by design and necessity, much simpler than traditional “desktop apps,” and because they run on the internet they are in many ways (though not in all ways) more conducive to collaboration among many users. They are also, in general, easier to integrate with other popular Web 2.0 formats and tools such as tags, wikis and blogs.
