Bob Cringely thinks that Google may not be interested in operating systems but could be playing to its strengths and could effectively take over the internet. All by seducing, he says. Dismissing Google’s interest in becoming a Super ISP, Bob writes,its interest in fibre could be for building Googlemarts – these containers could host within thousands of opteron processors and many petabytes of data & the idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid and adds these may be placed at around 300 locations which serve as the Internet peering points globally.They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. They offer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using that no-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offer super-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or no incremental cost to Google.
Huge upside : Internet TV will scale to the same level as broadcast and cable TV, the coming AJAX Office and other productivity apps, they'll sit locally, good backups, data never goes away unless deleted. This is more than another Akamai or even an Akamai on steroids. This is a dynamically-driven, intelligent, thermonuclear Akamai with a dedicated back-channel and application-specific hardware. Google has the reach and the resources to make this work. There will be the Internet, and then there will be the Google Internet, superimposed on top. Cringley thinks that this is similar to Wal-Mart strategy – just as Wal-Mart doesn't try to own the roads its goods are carried over, Google won’t trample over ISP’s. And the final result is that Web 2.0 IS Google.
My Take: It is very difficult to say if Cringley is right – he may not be totally wrong. But as I its time Google outlines its vision. Like in any other industry the responsibility of pioneers and leaders are lot more than just looking after themselves - they are trendsetters and rolemodels in the industry.
But Cringley's idea warrant serious examination. I do not necessarily think about this as GoogleVs Microsft/Yahoo issue alone – but if you extend things further- it could be the case local processing intensities may improve- opening up a new wave of distributed computing – the network and infrastructure ecosystem would be forced to upgrade/transform massively- triggering and cascading huge opportunities for infrastructure and service players – once the public infrastructure gets upgraded like this – several other industries including the enterprise software sector may look at leveraging the new infrastructure in lot many more new ways – This would lead to A NEW INTERNET ECOSYSTEM per se – If cringley is right – we are in for A HUGE CHANGE AHEAD – WITH HUMONGOUS OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL PLAYERS OPERATING IN THE ECOSYSTEM.
Category :Emerging Trends, Google
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