mediajunk

An article by Faisal Islam in yesterday's Observer, entitled Great moments for rivals of Gates, contained many thought-provoking insights into the future shape of the IT industry. I was struck by this assessment of Google's forthcoming Gmail service: "Rather than using a Windows desktop, everything - software, photographs, documents, music - could be based on a remote supercomputer and accessed through the web using efficient 'slim' mini-computers and souped-up mobile phones. 'This is what Larry Ellison at Oracle and Sun Microsystems have been banging on about, but haven't actually executed,' says one former Microsoft executive. 'They did not have the crucial killer application - search - but Google does.' At work, and increasingly at home, an information overload puts a premium on effective ways of filtering, indexing and quickly retrieving filed documents, photographs, videos and music. Software programmes matter, and have made Microsoft its billions. But the really important function for many people is navigation and access. So the search methods Google has developed, for mapping six billion web pages around the world, will become potentially critical within corporations, besides being seen as crucial for home use." Of course, Gmail also opens up all sorts of privacy concerns ... but many have predicted for some time that the future of computing lies with network storage. Google is making that future a reality.