The Future of Online Platforms

It was another jam packed event at the Googleplex, with tonnes of great food, great companies and fantastic panel on "The Future of Online Platforms". Before the speakers talked about the future, Ismail Ghalini, focused on the definition of the platform. Twenty years ago, we all understood what a platform is. It's essentially an OS, and you had three options: MS-DOS if you want the large market, Mac OS if you're edgy, and UNIX if you're really technical. They all did pretty much the same thing, had fairly similar business models, and people built applications that could be ported from one to the other (somehow). What is a platform today? What is it made of? How do you use to build not only applications but real businesses on top of it? What are thebusiness models? Can I build for multiple of them at the same time? What do the ecosystems look like? Who do I talk to in order to getstarted? That kind of thing. Does it make sense? It was a controversial and fun event and we will have to video soon for all to view.