Here’s a little reaction I posted to ok-canel in response to an article on Ajax by Adaptive Path’s Jesse Garrett:

“Ajax” signifies a collection of prior existing, relatively mature, mutually supporting web technologies that many of us have been using for years in roughly the same way Ajax describes. So what is it then? Nothing but a snappy label–with an increasingly heavy dose of hype.

Like Cayce Pollard’s allergy to brands, I have an allergy to hype. It starts in the pit of my stomach with a squishy queasy feeling, and then moves up to choke my throat, and finally lands in my sinus cavity with throbbing pressure on my sensibilities. Ajax is starting to give me some mild queasiness.

Some of you may have noticed that Adaptive Path coined the term “Ajax” and is doing a terrific job of branding it (this well-written article is a fine example). Of course in branding Ajax they also brand themselves as THE go-to company for all your Ajax needs (sort of what Cooper has done with personas). This strikes my cynical side as more of an Adaptive Path marketing initiative than a genuine technology.

This is of course a fairly common criticism, even appearing in wikipedia’s entry on Ajax.

On another note I’d like to take exception to the Oddpost vs Google example. Garrett asks “[w]hat’s the difference between Oddpost and Gmail?” And then goes on to imply that the difference is Ajax, and that Gmail beats Oddpost hands-down because of it.

While I agree whole heartedly with the philosophical reasoning that open systems are ultimately superior to closed systems, I think Garrett presents a false dichotomy. The real differences between Oddpost and Gmail start with the fact that Oddpost was created by two unemployed guys with laptops sitting in a San Francisco coffee shop. While Google is a multi-national behemoth that’s starting to make even Microsoft worry.

Despite the resource constraints, Oddpost developed one of the simplest, most elegant UIs I’ve ever used. Its light-years ahead of Gmail and other webapps. It light-years ahead of most desktop apps. And I was happy to pay a mere $30 a year to have it. Meanwhile, I dread having to even look at Gmail, let alone use it.

Gmail is succeeding where Oddpost failed because of branding, marketing muscle, 2gigs of storage, and a $0 price tag, not because it offers a superior experience (which it does not) and certainly not because Google developers followed a CSS/Javascript/XHTML technological implementation that allows a small handful of rabid Safari fan-boys to read their email.

Garrett concludes saying “the recent Ajax explosion signals a new chapter in the history of Web design.” I suspect that’s a bit melodramatic. The web has seen lots of hype come and go.