Google: Desktops Irrelevant In Three Years

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The head of Google’s European operations, John Herlihy, gave a talk at University College Dublin in Ireland and said some surprising (but not unobvious) things about the future of home computing and Google’s take on it all. Herlihy predicts that in three years, the desktop will be “irrelevant”.

Herlihy said, “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.” He mentioned Google’s new focus on mobile platforms, like smartphones and said, “Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible. Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important.”

When Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at the Moblie World Congress in Spain earlier this month – he said similar things that Google was going to be moving their development focus away from the traditional desktop search engine and into more mobile applications and solutions.

Herlihy added that Google is constantly in jeopardy of being surpassed by the “next Sergey and Larry”. With how fast things move on the web (he gives the example of a new website being created in hours, or a brand new YouTube video being a hit by the end of the day), Google is trying to stay ahead of the curve and stay relevant.

“When we build something we strive for ubiquity in usage and adoption. That helps us understand how customers react and then we build a revenue model.” Herlihy said.