Google's Europe Boss Sees End of Desktops Rapidly Approaching
SiliconRepublic.com reports that Google Europe boss John Herlihy says desktops will be irrelevant in three years.
"In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs," Herlihy told a baffled audience, echoing comments by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the recent GSM Association Mobile World Congress 2010 that everything the company will do going forward will be via a mobile lens, centring on the cloud, computing and connectivity.
"Mobile makes the world's information universally accessible. Because there's more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that's why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later."
Desktops being irrelevant in just three years would be extremely quick. With drives and other computer parts shrinking so quickly it does look like large desktops will no longer be necessary. However, consumers and businesses are unlikely to be in a hurry to completely swap out laptops and PCs for mobile devices. Mobile technology and cloud computing offers a lot of promise but the security needs to improved before corporations start trusting it with important data.
