Tom Foremski: IMHO

Stunningly poor quality predictions about the future Internet from Google's CEO

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Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb writes about Eric Schmidt's predictions about the future of the Internet, delivered at a Gartner conference.

I'm rarely impressed by Mr Schmidt's predictions or analysis of Internet trends. Even though he is CEO of Google, his position seems to fail to provide him with anything insightful to say about the future Internet.

Take a look: Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years

Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
Today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.
Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
...content will move towards more video.
Real Time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."
There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.
"We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"
It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.
Real Time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."

Chinese language will dominate the web? So what? It won't dominate in my world or yours. It won't stop people reading their own languages.

Teenagers are the model, they move seamlessly from app to app. I move seamlessly from app to app. So do you. I'm fed up with received wisdom about the digital saviness of teenagers. I've got teenagers, and I know their friends. They are as plugged in as you and I. They are better at some things, they are clueless about other things.

There is less of a generational gap than many people without teenagers think. There is an experiential gap not a generational gap when it comes to tech. You have to be exposed to the digital world in order to know it, it has nothing to do with age.

Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law. The math doesn't look right. Computing power doubles roughly every two years, that's what Moore's Law describes. But so what? What are we going to be doing with that extra computing power? It would be great to have some insight here.

Distribution distinctions between the web, radio and TV will go away. OMG. Is this the best he can do? I haven't had cable TV for a couple of years, I watch TV through my laptop connected to the TV, I listen to radio podcasts over DSL. I'm no different from tens of millions of people who do the same and most probably have noticed that distribution distinctions have gone away.

People will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. They always have listened to other people given the chance, now social networks make it easier to share recommendations. Learning how to rank this information is a problem? There's no problem here, people know how to rank their friends and their social network sources. It's a personal ranking system that is far more relevant, far more targeted than any algorithm Google could come up with.

Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information. Another valuable insight from a company whose mission has always been to "index all the world's information."

The quality of Mr Schmidt's predictions are stunningly disappointing especially since he is sitting on top of a company that is privy to massive amounts of Internet usage data from every part of the world. Not to mention that it has tens of thousands of engineers working on new projects.

posted by Tom Foremski
October 27, 2009 @ 5:55 pm

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Stunningly poor quality predictions about the future Internet from Google's CEO

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