Lean by Design

It occurred to me while watching a recent keynote address by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, that the real threat Google represents to others in the ICT industry, is in the next generation computing platforms that they are developing. They are creating an almost insurmountable lead in Platform technologies that will power virtually all machine and system level intelligence in the future. They are set to become the “Intel Inside” of the internet and virtually all computing in the future. Perhaps this is old news to some, and silly conspiracy talk to others, but this perspective crystallized for me as I watched the MWC keynote speech by Eric Schmidt.

The many end user applications like Buzz, that Google is putting out, are mere distractions. What really counts, are the enabling technologies that Google continues to develop and refine. These technologies are all rooted in clever graph traversal algorithms, machine learning and Stream Processing technology that underpinned Google’s early success in Internet search. Google is reinventing embedded applications like image processing (consider Google Goggles), and voice recognition, using largely Cloud based computing resources and exploiting their core search technologies mentioned above.

While IBM and others have invested heavily in Stream Based and Complex Event Processing systems, Google continues to innovate practical uses that are driving evolution of the internet. And in the process, they are changing the economics of computing as well as the location of intelligence in the network. For the past two decades intelligence has shifted from central mainframes out towards the periphery of the network, and now that momentum is shifting toward the Cloud. The Cloud won’t simply dominate traditional server and desktop applications. Increasingly, embedded applications will migrate into the Cloud / Googleplex, and this could have a profound impact on the nature of end user computing hardware. Increasingly these products will become simple input, display and sensing devices. The stage is now set for the realization of a suite of true internet appliances, the likes of which were first conceived almost 15 years ago.

Data and the volume of data is absolutely critical to the effectiveness of contemporary intelligence methods, and so he who controls the larger data bases will be able to offer superior capabilities. And Google is obviously well positioned in this regard. So what will happen to innovation? Well, I would suggest that it will be very difficult for the normal engines of innovation in our economy – start-ups – to succeed with anything but innovations on the fringe. Unless the data is freely available to all, the largest companies – i.e. Google – will have a huge advantage. Device and application innovation will become more important to entrepreneurs as infrastructure or platform innovation will become more difficult.