Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb had an interesting post today recapping an interview with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt at last week’s Gartner Symposium. In a short, 6 minute segment out of the full 45 minute interview (video below), Schmidt hinted at what the future of the internet will bring.
Via RWW: Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years
- Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
Today’s teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.
Five years is a factor of ten in Moore’s Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
“We’re starting to make significant money off of Youtube”, content will move towards more video.
“Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results.”
There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.
“We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?”
It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that “is the great challenge of the age.” Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.
It’s hard to argue with any of those, really. The one I’m looking forward to most of all is the convergence of media platforms as the lines between TV, Radio, and Web become more and more blurry. As those lines become blurred, more innovation will occur between the gaps and the old-time revenue models based mostly on distribution begin to fall apart.
