I honestly have no idea if this is all going to work out as this current.boom seems to think it is, but man, it really is the second coming of client-server. Today’s example? A flowchart engine built in flash from gliffy.com. They’re in beta and unfortunately not taking new accounts right now, but that link will give you a pretty good sense of what their service is about.

There’s a pretty good comment in the latest cringely column that touches on the core of this I think – he’s talking specifically about Microsoft when he says this:

1) Gates and Ozzie HUGELY over-estimate the role of advertising. This is intentional because it distracts with enthusiasm and plays into current Internet hype. Advertising alone will not be able to support these services, especially if Microsoft benefits from them only tangentially as Ozzie suggests. Remember that for Gates and Ballmer to be happy, Microsoft will have to maintain $2.5 billion per month in revenue and $1.5 billion per month in profit. That’s FIVE TIMES the size of Google without Google’s ad expertise or ad infrastructure. It simply won’t happen.

But the takeaway is – there’s not as much money in net advertising as there is in selling licensed software, not by a ginormous order of magnitude. I agree with Cringley, it’s hard to imagine Microsoft sustaining itself on this business. The question is, can all these smaller players like today’s example? Some of them, including Gliffy, seem to intend to upsell into paid services for some of this stuff, but at least as far as I can recall there’s not a ton of success with this model. Anyone know how many folks actually pay Yahoo for an enhanced email account, for example? Or Flickr? My sense is not a lot, and you’re basically dis-incented to do so because there’s always someone else with a better deal anyway. I’m seeing tons of cool applications coming out these days (Writely, Gliffy, Num Sum, and so on) but what I don’t see is the business model. It reminds me of the first dot.bomb, bigtime. Anyone seeing something I’m not here?