In a decade, it will all be about who owns applications and users.

With online user community Facebook's recent acquisition of Parakey, the online world has once again been flooded with talk about the web OS concept – yes, the old chestnut from a decade ago. Web OS is not exactly a new concept, although the definition has changed substantially over the past decade. Web OS is, theoretically, where all the applications that Google has built for online use come together, the social networking engine and applications that reside in Facebook congregate, and purpose-built online applications such as FlickR live.

As the name suggests, the internet is the proverbial operating system, simply playing host to a wealth of online applications. Where the focus was clearly on these applications and how open they were to being ‘mashed-up' in the past, this year sees a tectonic shift. It's suddenly all about who owns the platform, and the first mover seems to be Facebook. The proprietors of this online phenomenon understand that whoever owns the web operating system will be able to offer the best applications to its users, and in turn, own the user. It's no longer about using an application from one part of the web and another application from a second part of the web. Users know what they want and they want things to be easily accessible from a single place.