Birmingham - Web 2.0 is not a well defined entity. Depending on who you speak with, their perspective will reflect their own product offering regarding Web 2.0. Ambit defines Web 2.0 as an "Application" focused web experience. First implementations of the World Wide Web simply delivered "documents".

Documents started out as simple hyper-text linked text files. Documents have evolved into very rich media (e.g. Photos, Graphics, Animation, etc.) experiences.

Now that the presentation side of the web rivals the desktop of popular operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux, or Apple's OS, the next step was to make documents dynamic portals that users could interact with. Google has driven this in large part with the development of AJAX. AJAX is not a cleanser but a loosely defined programming standard that "synchs" client browsers with web servers. The result of AJAX is a true interactive environment that gives the user the feel of an application and not a static document. You have probably been experiencing Web 2.0 systems without knowing it. If you use an on-line website for purchasing some goods and services, then you are using Web 2.0 features.

Rich applications like customer resource managers, on-line office tools, and databases, are now moving to a Web 2.0 environment. The greatest advantage of this approach is the separation of the operating system from the application. In years past, programmers had to make decisions about which platform best suited their software efforts and ultimately yielded the greatest amount of sales. Now a programmer simply focuses on user functionality and doesn't have to worry about whether the user is on Windows, Linux, Apple, or any other platform.