14 DAY TRIAL // Google believes in the cloud, its whole business revolves around it, so it's no surprise that it constantly argues the case for web services and products. But the latest comment from a high-ranking Google exec may be a little too optimistic to sound reasonable. Google Vice-President of Global Ad Operations John Herlihy believes that desktop computers will become irrelevant. No one's arguing against that, but he thinks that the deadline is 2013, which isn't that much even in the fast-changing world of IT.
“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” Herlihy told the audience at the Digital Landscapes conference in Dublin. The idea is in line with Google's company-wide 'propaganda' headed by the big man, Eric Schmidt, himself.
For Google the trend is clear, everything is going mobile and the smartphone will become the most popular 'screen,' subsequently Google's main target. There is some truth to this, smartphones are becoming increasingly popular in developed countries and phones are becoming more powerful with each new generation. Google has a big interest in the mobile space, it is evident from its Android mobile operating system to its recent acquisitions.
“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,” Herlihy added, driving home the point.
But is the desktop doomed in just three years? Laptop sales have risen dramatically in the last years and desktops are becoming niche, but they're hardly gone and there are plenty of things that you still can't do with a laptop. In the poorer countries of the world, the situation is even clearer, desktops are still cheaper than laptops and will continue to be for quite a while.