Google Plans to Eliminate the PC

[Scarecrow]

Google plans to make PCs history

Industry critics warn of danger in giving internet leader more power

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David Smith (http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidsmith), technology correspondent
The Observer, (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/) Sunday 25 January 2009
Article history (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/25/google-drive-gdrive-internet#history-byline)http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2007/07/13/google_robertson_1.jpg
Google (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/google) is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet) connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals' personal data.

The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.

The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily (http://www.tgdaily.com/index.php), which described it as "the most anticipated Google product so far". It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favour of "cloud computing (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/computing)", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.

Home and business users are increasingly turning to web-based services, usually free, ranging from email (such as Hotmail and Gmail) and digital photo storage (such as Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) and Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/mac/)) to more applications for documents and spreadsheets (such as Google Apps (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html)). The loss of a laptop or crash of a hard drive does not jeopardise the data because it is regularly saved in "the cloud" and can be accessed via the web from any machine.

The GDrive would follow this logic to its conclusion by shifting the contents of a user's hard drive to the Google servers. The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Google's operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware.

It is this prospect that alarms critics of Google's ambitions. Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, a charity defending computer users' liberties, did not dispute the convenience offered, but said: "It's a little bit like saying, 'we're in a dictatorship, the trains are running on time.' But does it matter to you that someone can see everything on your computer? Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the American government?"

Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing. Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: "There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,' to 'This is how I interact with information, this is how I interact with the web.'"

[sterlingice]

Haven't we been saying someone would eliminate the PC for a decade now? I remember it being part of Microsoft's anti-trust defense in that Netscape could make their own platform with a browser...

SI

[jeff061]

Yep, it will happen, whether it's google or someone else. It's already happening in the workplace in some places. Replacing workstations with stripped down terminals accessing a central cluster.

[BrianD]

How does this handle non-standard applications. Would we really install Football Manager to a GDrive?

Maybe this is just Google's way of letting other people collect porn for them.

[billethius]

Yep, it will happen, whether it's google or someone else. It's already happening in the workplace in some places. Replacing workstations with stripped down terminals accessing a central cluster.

It makes sense in a business environment where there isn't a ton of personal information being stored on the computers.

[jeff061]

No, but there is business information which would be considered even more secure. More and more companies are still offloading this data to external hosting companies though.

This is still a long ways away to be adopted by everyone, but it's going to happen. The Google model may not be it, who knows, maybe eventually it gets lumped into your ISP and they make money off your subscription rather than Google's more questionable activities.

If it comes down to trust there's going to be plenty of people who are ushered in without thinking, and a few who understand things better than don't.

But like I said, still a long ways out, a culture change needs to take place. I'd say a large part of this would take place from the vendor side(Dell, HP, ect.) the pushed by whatever third parties are trying to make money off it. From partnership with the vendors to marketing and other initiatives to educate the masses.

[sterlingice]

It makes sense in a business environment where there isn't a ton of personal information being stored on the computers.

More importantly, I don't see anyone with rows of HP or EDS or whoever MSA's with terabytes of data in their home where that makes sense. It's not like everyone would be cool with putting all their data on the neighborhood association mass storage array or something.

SI

[lordscarlet]

Google's applications (docs, calendar, spreadsheets, etc) have been excellent. I think done the right way, this could be excellent. The article doesn't describe exactly how this would work, though. I heard about a company in Palestine(?) on NPR that is doing just this -- They were called Ghost or something, I'll try to find the info.

[DaddyTorgo]

Google can't have my pRon.

Also curious about how this would work for applications such as games and stuff - while in theory it's very interesting and very Star-Treky, I think there are still details to be worked out.

[gstelmack]

For the e-mail / blog / MSOffice crowd, this may work just fine. For my video and photo editing / gaming self, they can have my PC when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

And yes, they've been discussing this since the mid-90s if not sooner. The NetPC was supposed to take over everything. Java and .NET were developed with this in mind...

[sabotai]

For the e-mail / blog / MSOffice crowd, this may work just fine. For my video and photo editing / gaming self, they can have my PC when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

+1

I just don't see how connection speeds are anywhere near fast enough to be able to play a full-blown game like Crysis or Half-Life 2 that is stored on a hard drive in a separate location using an internet connection.

[gstelmack]

The first thing that will happen after these "Net PCs" hit is someone will sell an add-on hard drive for caching things locally. Has Google LOOKED at the typical "Temporary Internet Files" folder to see how much data gets cached to make just regular browsing work?

[jeff061]

+1

I just don't see how connection speeds are anywhere near fast enough to be able to play a full-blown game like Crysis or Half-Life 2 that is stored on a hard drive in a separate location using an internet connection.

Quake Live - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Zero)

Quake Live will be released as a free version of Quake III: Gold (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena)<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference">[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_Zero#cite_note-3)</sup> (Quake III and its expansion pack, Team Arena) available only through a web browser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser).

It's a start.

In any case, more realistically I imagine you'll have a local drive that games will seamlessly download and install to but your interface, saved games, config files, ect, do not need to be local.

I also suspect internet connections will continue to go faster. In broad band we've gone from what, 768k or 1.5mb 8-10 years ago to upwards of 50mb now?

[rowech]

Yep, it will happen, whether it's google or someone else. It's already happening in the workplace in some places. Replacing workstations with stripped down terminals accessing a central cluster.

Sounds like the Borg

[Subby]

Hooray for good news!

[DaddyTorgo]

Sounds like the Borg

"We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. We will add your technological and biological distinctiveness to our own."

[jeff061]

Sounds like the Borg

I like to think of it as the cloud of :)happiness:) . Not the block of total information control and awareness.

[sterlingice]

I think Skynet is a better analogy :D

SI

[JediKooter]

I think Skynet is a better analogy :D

SI

Damn it! Beat me to it.

So Google is going to make Macs the computer that everyone uses huh? At least I know my paychecks won't be bouncing any time soon.

[Cringer]

Google plans to make PCs history
time.' But does it matter to you that someone can see everything on your computer? Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the American government?"


This argument is weak, since the government can take it from me just as easily. The only difference is at home I might be able to destroy it first, if I have enough warning before they break down my door. The government probably won't want pics of youth soccer, my dogs, some punk/ska/reggae/rock mp3s, or anything else I have though, at Google's data center or at my house.

If they want to stress a negative it should be hackers, identity thieves, and such people. Something like this would be a target, more then my home PC is.

[Solecismic]

When I was working for Computer Associates in 1997, the company assembled in New Orleans for what they called "CA World," a week of those insufferable team-building meetings and events.

The highlight was a performance from Penn and Teller, who do seem to be better magicians than television stars.

Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems gave a keynote address one of the evenings. He yammered on endlessly about how PCs would disappear from the marketplace within five years, and we'd all have dumb terminals linked to a network (and running Java, of course).

Microsoft was paying attention, and Java was nearly killed a year later.

My guess is that Windows 7 will contain some sort of high-speed and enhanced alternative to Google. And that Google will have about as much success eliminating the PC as McNealy did.

[rkmsuf]

I hope it works.

[SportsDino]

The technology will be available, matter of time, but replacing the hard drive might take longer than you think. You shouldn't replace something unless it is thoroughly useless, and the ability to have lots of storage that you are not relying on a pipe to get to is still very valuable (even a broadband sized one). More likely adoption is people will map a space of their computer to be shared (as you can already do)... and the real push will be in automatic tools to catalog/search/collect stuff into that space.

The media, as usual, doesn't know shit. Instead of the scare tactics approach they took to the article, it could be written from the angle it really is going to play out and everyone would be saying it is the awesome.

No one wants your pr0jn, or to serve up your multi-gigabyte apps to you (or run them server side and send you a vidstream), or even store the endless junk that tends to accumulate on your local disk.

[Chubby]

Yep, it will happen, whether it's google or someone else. It's already happening in the workplace in some places. Replacing workstations with stripped down terminals accessing a central cluster.

We just went to this and it sucks balls.

I particularly enjoyed waiting 2 hours today for someone to go hit the power button on my workstation at HQ because it had shut down...

[JediKooter]

I particularly enjoyed waiting 2 hours today for someone to go hit the power button on my workstation at HQ because it had shut down...

Now THAT is progress.

[jeff061]

Hah, that's not what I had in mind Chubby. That's a trashy solution :). More for working home on occasion.

I mean something more like VMWare's VDI. Its a server(likely a cluster) that's mission critical, it does not go down or need the power button pushed nearly ever(at the hazard of the admins job). It serves up a bunch of preconfigured images pretty much. You power on the terminal and it connects to one of these images.

It's not perfect, there are plenty of deal breaking lack of functionality and not yet worth the price(especially VDI). But it will be.

You could for instance setup a pool of "Technical Support" images running XP, Vista, Linux, whatever. You turn on a Tech support PC and it allocates one of the images to the terminal. While this is happening it's cloning a new image to make sure there are always enough available in the pool. You can permantely allocated an image to someone so their changes are persistent or you can have it dump the image altogether when their done, allocating a new one the next day.

I've messed around with it. It's pretty cool.

[rkmsuf]

Hah, that's not what I had in mind Chubby. That's a trashy solution :). More for working home on occasion.

I mean something more like VMWare's VDI. Its a server(likely a cluster) that's mission critical, it does not go down or need the power button pushed nearly ever(at the hazard of the admins job). It serves up a bunch of preconfigured images pretty much. You power on the terminal and it connects to one of these images.

It's not perfect, there are plenty of deal breaking lack of functionality and not yet worth the price(especially VDI). But it will be.

You could for instance setup a pool of "Technical Support" images running XP, Vista, Linux, whatever. You turn on a Tech support PC and it allocates one of the images to the terminal. While this is happening it's cloning a new image to make sure there are always enough available in the pool. You can permantely allocated an image to someone so their changes are persistent or you can have it dump the image altogether when their done, allocating a new one the next day.

I've messed around with it. It's pretty cool.


what about pron

[jeff061]

Some people add exploits to their audit reports. I add avi, wmv, mpg, mov. I collect.

So yeah. I'm not hurting the flow of porn damn it.

[rkmsuf]

Some people add exploits to their audit reports. I add avi, wmv, mpg, mov. I collect.

So yeah. I'm not hurting the flow of porn damn it.

good man

[gstelmack]

Microsoft was paying attention, and Java was nearly killed a year later.

Microsoft introduced .NET because:

1) They wanted in on the Net PC thingy

and

2) Sun didn't want to add useful things to Java

Sun killed Java, Microsoft didn't.

[sterlingice]

Another thing that wasn't a consideration in the 90s when this went around but is a huge deal now- hardware cost. Why bother spending for more complicated network infrastructure, storage, and a terminal when giving everyone a PC costs the same or even less. When you can go pluck computers off the shelf for $300- where's the cost savings to the company?

SI

[jeff061]

Not having to maintain PCs. Also, $300 is reasonable for a hard wired terminal. You are not buying quality low maintenance PC for that kind of money. $600-700 for the bottom line there, and they will perform much worse than that $300 terminal.