1.	Now you may not like this, you may think they all have to support the W3C standards, but they don't. Standards bodies can't make the kind of transition that's sure to come in networking in the next few years. To me, the activity around W3C looks like the stuff that goes on while the real transitions are happening in the market. The fights over expanded versus extended memory. Various mail APIs that were being pitted against each other while SMTP and POP were taking over the desktop mail systems.
2.	Exciting software is what drives transitions. The IBM PC didn't go anywhere until 1-2-3 came out. And the Mac didn't boom until they erased the artificial 128K limit making way for Pagemaker, Photoshop, Excel, Director and other graphic apps that did something fun and useful with the memory.
3.	Periods of openness are followed by periods of closedness. To assume that servers will be licensable, that the protocols will be discoverable, is naive. The software business is played nasty. Did you ever try to reverse-engineer the Excel or Word file formats? No matter what the standards-zealots say, the high ground belongs to the one who provides the software that excites users. In retrospect, Netscape blew it bigtime by yielding to the hype of the standards proponents. (Is it any surprise that Microsoft lead the parade?) Netscape could have, and should have, locked Microsoft out. Too bad they didn't have an architect with deep experience with software industry nastyness. They were led by a lamb and the sheep. It didn't work, at least the first time around. (AOL gets the nasty side of the business.)
4.	The one that gets the best bet down, and manages to promote a client app that has greater appeal than their own server, will be the high-riser of the next decade. As 1-2-3 was derived from Visicalc, as the Mac had much in common with the PC, the next generation will look a lot like a web browser, but it will also look a lot *better* than web browsers, if you get what I mean.
5.	Nielsen says it's going to be quiet in browser-land for the forseeable future. Who gets to make the noise that fills the silence? If history and human nature are any guide, that's where the next Mike Markkula, Ben Rosen or Jim Clark will place their bets.