Ted Neward writes about “Web” and “Services” and the fact that in his opinion two concepts are mixed in the term. I agree, but I’d object to this:

For example, interoperability is easy if we use text-based protocols, since everybody knows how to read and write text; hence, HTTP and SMTP and POP3 are highly-interoperable protocols, but DCOM’s MEOW or Java’s JRMP protocols aren’t, since each relies on sending binary little-endian or big-endian-encoded data.

That’s one difference, but not the only one — HTTP is simply on another layer than JRMP, and it’s its genericity that makes it so useful even when exchanging binary data.