14 DAY TRIAL // Google’s Eric Schmidt has never been afraid of speaking his mind, so his latest predictions for 2014 shouldn’t come as a surprise.
The chairman of one of the world’s biggest Internet companies said that mobile had already won. In 2014, he believes that everyone will have a smartphone, as he told Bloomberg.
The mobile trend has been quite clear over the past years, especially given the growing sales of smartphones and tablets.
“The biggest disrupter that we are sure about is the arrival of big data and machine intelligence everywhere. To have the ability to find people, to talk specifically to them, to judge them, to rank what they’re doing, to decide what to do with your products changes every business, globally,” Schmidt said.
Regarding the things he didn’t see coming in the past, Schmidt admitted that social media was not something he predicted. “The biggest mistake that I made was not anticipating the rise of the social networking phenomenon. Not a mistake we’re going to make again. I guess, in our defense, we were busy working on many other things, but we should have been in that area and I take responsibility for that,” said Schmidt.
That explains why Google entered the game so late and why Google+ has never really lifted off as an independent social network. Perhaps that’s also the reason why Google+ is now being turned into Google’s backbone, as they push for more connectivity between all of the company’s products.
For the coming year, Google is planning on continuing investments and hiring across the world. However, Schmidt refused to share any particular plans for its products and made absolutely no reference to the big launch of Google Glass, which is still scheduled for 2014.
Another area that Google could expand in the coming year is robotics, especially judging by the acquisitions it has made this year in this area.
