Cloud Thoughts

Funny, prior to reading "In the plex", a book about the breif history of Google, I really didn't "get" the concept of the cloud. It wasn't a technical thing...that part I understand. In fact, my argument was that the cloud didn't really exist as a separate entity from the internet itself. After all, Hotmail is a premium example of cloud computing and its been around since the internet was powered by kerosene.

But the eureka moment I got from In the plex was that because Google's revenue is based on ads, everything they do must get people both online (point #1), more on line (point #2) and get them to process stuff faster (point #3).

Point #1

Here's where I see Google taking down pure play communication providers. What is to stop Google from offering WiMax? Money and political clout (to get Governments to sell them spectrum). So, like done and done. Well, perhaps it will take time, but its a given Google will get there. With no obstacle to getting online (in Canada the obstacle is huge - minimum of $50/month for internet alone. They just rules out a huge swath of people.) people will get online.

Point #2

Building on point #1 (i.e. my laptop goes online the second WiMax is introduced, but my other devices follow in about a nanosecond), there is a need to move more business processing to the cloud. The reality is that an office worker will spend more time on line than a truck driver. Can we get that truck driver to work out of an office somehow? And for those already online, can more of what they do be done via the cloud? Google has its equivalent of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Those are a good start, but what about everything else? Can you do CAD/CAM? HMI? ATMs? Where is the line drawn where one could realistically say that everything is now on the cloud?

Point #3

I used Google spreadsheets back in ye olden days and it was slow. And honestly, it still kinda sucks relative to Excel (my opinion). Google's spreadsheet application can't just be as fast as Excel. It has to beat Excel in every category. Moving your cursor needs to be faster. Copy/paste - faster. Creating formulas, way faster. In fact, if there were simply technology limits of cloud computing relative to cursor movement and copy/paste, then the creating formulas thing becomes 'the key' - what can Google do to make creating formulas either more intuitive, or a thing of the past. Can I enter a value in a cell and instantly get suggested spreadsheets I might otherwise want to create? I know everyone thinks they have a highly specific need they are trying to fulfill, but the reality is that's not true. An office worker in Stockholm who needs to manage training rooms has the exact problem that an office worker in New York has. Why do both have to go through the same pains? Why can't Google interject and see that the second guy is trying to do what the first guy did and say - "Are you trying to do this?". Bingo...I just typed a few pieces of info into my spreadsheet, and its already done. We have something like that today with the concept of templates, but that is part of a dinosaur era. Templates are a human's interpretation of how to get tasks accomplished. We need a machine interpreted way of doing it. When Google asks "Are you trying to do this" it is not necessarily taking the existing spreadsheet and letting the second guy edit it. Instead, Google is interpreting the original spreadsheet and determining the best way to implement it for the second guy, knowing what Google knows about the second guy. Maybe Google can't figure out 100% of the business processes of the second guy, but Google can surely format the header and footer to look exactly as the second guy would make them. Not necessarily a big deal, but time saved nonetheless. And what if Google could figure out how to follow the second guy's business practices. Maybe that's not possible in the first spreadsheet, but after a while, when the second guy always shows a subtotal then a final total multiplied by 14%, Google could do that automatically.

And that's the trivial part. The tough part is getting all the other forms of computer software on the cloud. Music. Videos (well, done I guess), Games, Chat, etc. Of all of those, Games deserve special mention. They are addicitive and require huge system resources. The top-of-the-heap problem. There is a belief that HTML5 will save the day. I'm none-too-sure about that. I think this is a bigger problem than people think. But it is being done, so...hopefully. And when I say "game" I mean the real stuff, like Call of Duty, not Angry Birds. Angry Birds is a pacman moment in our history. A game where we'll look back and say remember when it was so easy to make games for computers? Them days are going away.