Google and Their Server Farm

JR writes "CNet has a very interesting story about Google, operating systems, and where Google may be going. The upshot is that they may make OS issues totally irrelevant by supplying everything anyone needs over the web from their mega-server-farm."

Comments

Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[filmmaker]

"Ajax, which is short for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, combines JavaScript, dynamic HTML, and XMLHTTP to, in essence, let you build Web-based applications that run as quickly and seamlessly as local software."

Great. If the author of the article gets her pie-in-the-sky dream, the future of virtually all client-side computing will lie in the hands of javascript code. For certain applications, like ones with small, text data sets, a system like Ajax could "feel" like a desktop application. The bandwidth just isn't there for video or even industrial photo work. I wouldn't want to run a batch script to modify 5,000 images in the Ajax analog of Photoshop. Better not be a fiber network without any limits on network transfer.

Besides that, who wants anything but light-weight or at least, non-critical, data and applications to be out on the network. Gmail is a perfect network application, but my financial software or any number of other things? No thanks.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[Alan Shutko]

Besides that, who wants anything but light-weight or at least, non-critical, data and applications to be out on the network. Gmail is a perfect network application, but my financial software or any number of other things? No thanks.

Online tax software has proven to be very popular over the last couple years, so not everyone shares your qualms.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[toasted_calamari]

I think the biggest issue with this idea is that it fails to address the big Why? Why do I want to do everything in a web browser? Given that I have a laptop with all my data and all the software i need. And given that I can use this software to do my work regardless of my internet connection, why would the "google dream" be better?

It seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[FirienFirien]

I'm completely in line with this - the first thing that came to mind was photoshop, and the hundreds of megs per file that always happens with files that have been worked on for a while. Remote access? No thanks.
Second that came to mind was gaming - java games are all very well, but they have their problems; games like puzzle pirates, designed for all-platform use, based on java, still have fairly large load times - and this is with most data on your computer. Getting all that kind of information remotely on top of the current stuff would require huge improvements in bandwidth.
Third thing that came to mind was privacy issues (with the recent security incidents), hacking attempts (this'd be a tempting target to the scum that take pleasure from targeting useful systems), and so on.

It's a nice idea to improve the current stuff with the JS+XML we're seeing - and there's some neat stuff; multimap's mouseovering with image/map combination; this neat thing that you can click on when you recognise a book cover; yeah, it's nice to look at, nice to use, but we're left with: "Variety is the spice of life", and there's something BIG to be said about keeping seperate platforms and utility. Competition leads to better stuff, where uniformity leads to stagnation.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[Draknor]

True, it's not a all-in-one solution, but for the majority of desktop apps, its a very good solution. Simple things like email & general word processing would be relatively trivial to do in this fashion, and I bet most spreadsheets & presentations could be done here too. Basically the 80-20 rule - roughly 80% of an "average" computer user's daily work could be migrated to a web-app system without much perceived loss of a function. Maybe 20% or so you'd still need full-blown desktop apps to handle.

Same for financial software - you may not like having your financial information out on the net, but guess what? It's already there, in the form of online banking, credit history reports, etc. I would definitely want to see some good security practices in place before I'd consider doing my bookkeeping on a webapp, but I wouldn't dismiss it out-of-hand.

Some things aren't going to work in this framework. Video & industrial photo work aren't going to fly. But most home-users don't do that now anyway. Photo processing for them is removing red-eye and cropping the image, one picture at a time. Programming will probably go both ways - some shops have complex development environments setup that would probably have to remain desktop apps, others could probably switch to some kind of webapp without much difficulty.

I admit, I don't like the idea of all of my files being out on the network, but the author brings up a good point - how many of us actually make backups? I burn a couple of CDRs every few months when I remember to, but I know I don't have a good personal backup policy, and none of my friends or family do. PCs being in the state they are - in a constant flux of updates and upgrades and spyware - for many home users they do not appear to be very reliable. Having a persistant data store for my mother that's not dependent her computer remaining in good working order would be a strong selling point, especially considering most PC dealers response on the help desk is "Insert the restore CD and reboot".

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[cyfer2000]

better mobility.

easier communication.

better additional information assitance.

no need to worry about hard drive failure, I only saw two in my whole life though.

no need to worry about some one steal your notebook. If you lost your computer, you either lost nothing if you store your data remotely or everything if you store all your data locally.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[biglig2]

The point is more that your data and applications become disassociated with your hardware.

So you have a laptop, and a desktop, and a desktop in the office, and they all see the same data, as does the screen in the local Starbucks, and the one at the library, and the one in the phone booth, and the one at the client site, and the one built into your car, and the one in your PDA, and the one in your ipod, and the one in your mobile phone.

I think computers should be like stationery. You go to the closet, pick up a terminal, authenticate, bam all your data is there.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[Kaa]

Today, think of the benefits from PC virtualization:

Ooookay, let's see...

compiling would be done over a huge grid of computers,

People who compile will have their own computers for sure. Isn't the general consensus that the everthing-is-a-Google-web-app world is for the unwashed masses? :-)

video games would be faster because the client/server communications barrier would no longer exist (well, it still would exist, but it'd mostly be sending images to the user's computer, and then the user sending short commands back),

ROTFL. Welcome to the world of X Window, VNC, and remote displays.

But let's check if the games would be faster :-) Let's say the game runs at 1600x1200 resolution. That means a single screen is 1.92 megapixels. Each pixel needs three bytes of RGB data, so that's 5.76Mb for a single screen. We want to have 60 fps for twitchy games, so we need the bandwidth of 5.76 * 60 = 345.6MB / second which is around 3.5 Gigabits/second. A dedicated OC-48 line (2.5 Gbits/sec) won't cut it, we'll need at least OC-192 going into each house ('cause more than one person might want to play games simultaneously).

Yeah, definitely, this will solve all the network lag problems...

all your data would be automatically backed up and secured,

Until the rats in a warehouse in Calcutta chew through the backup tapes...

and the world would have less environmental damage due to outdated computers with lead parts.

Umm.. what would be that thing that talks to Google servers -- the one with the screen, the keyboard, the network interface, the video chip, the sound chip, etc. etc.? Maybe a computer?

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[ciroknight]

And you were the exact person I was afraid would reply to my comment, but I have been preparing for you, so let's rumble.

Compiling is a task well suited for distribution, unlike most. Development can be done at any dumb terminal anywhere, and doesn't require you to have your own machine to do the work. If you ask most developers, they telnet into a server anyways, so this isn't going to be some big inconvience to them.

Ah next up, the big one, games. Let's rework your calculations a bit, since they're a bit.. shady to say the least. Most monitor's MAXIMUM supported resolution is 1600x1200 (17" Dell Crapmon). Most people run games at 800x600, so let's shoot the gap at 1200x768. A 1200x768 image is 921k pixels. In most systems with 32bit colors, means that we need 12 bits per pixel for color, or simply, four bytes. 4 x 921k = 3M. Okay, it's sounding bad isn't it? Let's continute. To play a video game, we only need 30 frames per second? Why? Because our eyes can't see better than that, unless you are a fighter pilot or a mutant, both of which don't have the time to play video games every day. So we're at 110M/sec ish. OH WAIT, I think I forgot to mention something we do to images before we send them over a network connection. What's that you ask? COMPRESSION. Using a streaming MPEG-type compression algorithm, we effectively reduce that 110M/second to say, 30M/sec, give or take 10M (240Mbits/sec). So while you overshoot the bandwidth requirements by more than 10x, I can understand your concern in this department. Bandwidth ISN'T cheap now, but as Fiber to the Home matures, and media companies move towards web-based data, bandwidth costs will go down. Also, the data we're working with isn't scientific, and I'm fairly certain I'd want to drop the framerate to 24 frames a second, and use a much more aggressive video compression algorithm and a fairly smaller resolution mode (Hell, I don't use greater than 1024x768 for most games).

For backups, I don't see your point at all. EULAs can say that you're responsible for your own data, but that would defeat the purpose. If they lose your data, they're responsible and they can and should be sued. But since any competent company will take care of their customers and their data, this isn't a problem.

Lastly, the problem I speak of comes from consumeristic society. Google's servers are a order of magnitude more environmentally safe: They're likely to stay on the rack for 10-20 years, they're newer computers so they're built to better environmentally safe specifications, they don't get replaced bi-yearly, they (most likely) do not use monitors (hell, why would they? someone can administrate the server 2000 miles away from a dumb terminal), with NO sound hardware, NO video hardware. If you're trying to tell me it's more environmentally sound to build 1000 desktop computers, monitors, keyboards and mice, than to build 200 servers, 20 switches (most of which are backup), a few hundred feet of cable, then you've got serious issues.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[jdog1016]

Ok, but, if all applications would be run through firefox/some other browser, then why use something as overhead-demanding as linux?

IMHO, this whole concept of building thin-client, web-based replacements for *everything* is totally counterproductive. Consumers have more than enough power to run these applications on their own machines and without an internet connection needed. What happens when your connection goes down and you have a term paper due the next morning? Having said this, there really doesn't appear to be any evidence that google is moving in this direction anyway. Portal maybe, operating system no.

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[aixou]

We'll see an Audrey-like Linux Box with a Firefox and nothing else and it'll be called a GoogleBox. You can do your e-mail, web browsing, photo organizing, document writing, and music work on this box and you never need to run scandisk, install AV software, deal with adware, etc. etc. etc.

Plug into your cable modem and go.

It's not what I need or you need but it's what most people need.

Absolutely not. You highly underestimate the average user if you think their computing needs will be satiated so simply.
Such a box would face that same problems that the "other OSes" (i.e. non-Windows) are today. People can't just walk into the store and pick up a game or other Application and use it. People can't walk in to the store, buy a scanner, and expect it to work.

There is too much talk about the mythical user that only uses checks their email and browses the web. As far as I can tell, this user is the exception rather than the norm. Real users use all of that and more.
It's like the saying about Microsoft Office, that even though few people use more than 10% of the features of Office, everyone uses a different 10% and thusly Microsoft can't really cut out the bloat without pissing a fair chunk of users.

It's the same way here. Everyone may use a minimal amount of software, but they all use different software, and to try to fill their needs with such a simple box is ludicrous.

Regardless though, what makes google so special that anyone should trust their entire computing experience to them? I thought computing monocultures were a bad thing in general. Why is it OK for google to have more control over a user than Microsoft ever had?

If I trust my computing experience to a web-based system, I am trusting it to too many fault points for comfort. What happens if the web goes down? Google gets hacked? DNS server goes down?

There are just too many dependencies in such a system for it to ever work (dependence on your net connection, that google will continue the service, that hardware makers will support the box. etc etc)

Re:Her Pie-in-the-Sky Dream is What?

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

People like to own things. They want to own their car, their house, their toys, and, likely, their computer.

I don't know that I could ever reach the point where I'd trust a giant company out there to always give me my information and allow me to use the things I want to use.

Do you keep your life savings hidden under the bed, or do you trust a giant company to always give back your money when you want to widthdraw it?

Now, if I'd asked that in the 1930's, a lot of people would have said no, and for good reason. It wasn't until we had deposit insurance and so on that people became comfortable with keeping their money in bank accounts.

Likewise, we'll likely need improvments in privacy laws and encryption before we get the same level of acceptance for remote personal-computing services.

Microsoft already tried this

[silverbax]

Along with about 1,000 other dot-com start ups.

Brilliant

[tabkey12]

Thin-Client computing by another name, again. Wasn't convinced 20 years ago. Still not convinced now. I don't want to have a useless PC just because I stopped paying the $20 a month subscription to the applications.

Re:Brilliant

[xtracto]

Now, worst than that. Imagine what will happen if for some, any reason your data is lost in their servers.

Of course, as the EULA will state, the service goes with no warrantay and AS IS. So after that you will just be screwed.

And there you have another point, I sincerely preffer to buy a house than to rent it, if I rent software, they will have me grabbed-by-the-b4115 until I die, and surely DRMd in some way. It is similar to iTunes, once they grab you, you pay, or scream...

Sincerely I think that approach is just useful as sun approach, for "processing" tasks, no information storing or "application rental"

Re:Brilliant

[qwijibo]

Do you run your own servers to be online 24x7 to collect your email and serve your web pages?

Those people who want to hold onto and control all of their own stuff will still be able to do so.

The proposed solution here would address the vast majority who are happy to give up some control for the convenience of not having to administer their own systems.

I personally wouldn't want everything being held and run by a third party. However, there are many things which are less important to me that I'd be perfectly comfortable with being provided by a third party, especially one with the infrastructure needed to be reliable.

Re:Brilliant

[BWJones]

So, like you I have had the same thoughts. However, I have been constantly surprised at what the market will support. The trick is that you have to think outside of your own needs or intellectual viewpoint. For instance, I have always been stunned at the sales of things like magnetic bracelets and much of the supplement industry (not all mind you, but most of it). People will buy what they want because they think they need it.

The above was just an example and I am not lumping Google into that category as I believe in their product and their business approach. As for thin client computing, there are those that are simply interested in typing letters, surfing the web and email. That's it. For those customers (arguably in the tens of millions or more), this solution looks to me like it would work. Google already has a built in client base and this might be a perfect business to expand into.

Re:Brilliant

[borroff]

Of course, Google would be happy to sell you data replication services, where you are allocated a certain amount of near-line storage, should this occur.

TFA points out that most people don't back up their stuff anyway, and if they do, most of them certainly don't do it offsite.

Not going to happen anytime soon

[dtolton]

Seriously if I had a dime for everytime someone predicted the demise
of the desktop, I'd have a couple of bucks.

Here is the problem I have with her theory. Her points were all
logical and well laid out, essentially that most people aren't system
administrators and that they don't back their data up, don't secure it
etc. While that is true, it doesn't necessarily lead to people giving
up the desktop in favor of a thin client. Giving up your desktop is
an emotional decision, and there are a lot of factors that weigh
against that.

In the long run, maybe ten, fifteen or even twenty years in the
future, this type of service may be much more prevalent. But I don't
think something like this will change over night. Think about how
much computer systems have really changed in the last ten years. Not
that much if you really stop to think about it. What she is
predicting is a *massive* paradigm shift to say the least. Microsoft
didn't have the clout to pull it off, probably because no one trusts
them enough. Do you trust Google enough to give them *all* of your
data? I'm not sure I trust *anyone* that much.

Re:Not going to happen anytime soon

[ThousandStars]

I think that, in the dim, misty future, it's possible that we'll have some kind of "always on" mostly thin-client computing. But that future is *at least* ten years off, and probably further than that. Other posters have been talking about privacy and user incompetance and such, which are all interesting points but I don't think they get at the core of what's wrong with the thin-client idea.

One comment, however, has, and I think it's worthwhile reiterating its point here. The biggest problems with thin-clients is that fully-functional computers these days are so powerful and so inexpensive that it doesn't make sense to have a computer that is a dedicated thin client. When Wal*Mart can sell $200 machines with a 20GB HD, CD drive and acceptably fast processor, who needs a thin client-only machine that costs $190 or $200 and offers fewer features than the Wal*Mart machine? No one does, so I think the desktop model is here to stay -- things like ripping CDs, burning them, or playing DVDs make no sense whatsoever over a network because of the large file sizes they entail. Hell, even eMachines has a complete computer for about $400, while Maybe when everyone has 10GB/sec to the premises the thin-client idea might make sense, but that day is so far off and by then computers will be so powerful that the economics still won't work.

A more likely scenario to my mind is a combination of thin/fat clients -- Google or some other provider will offer e-mail, Ofoto or something like them will offer picture websites (even as a local machine keeps copies of those pictures), and people use the web for data mining, maps, etc. Meanwhlie, the desktop machine remains the primary place to run office apps, games (which people in this thread seem to have forgotten) and other resource-intensive applications. Instead of having a thin-client world, like TFA describes even when it doesn't, we'll have options. I like options, MS probably doesn't like options, and Google is probably wary of options and aware of its precarious position: users are only one click away from its rivals. Of course, that vision may ultimately result in fewer net flamefests over the relative merits of fat/thin-clients, but I think it's the most probable outcome.

Re:Google will likely try to do this.

[micromoog]

In the future, the network will be just as dependable as any other public utility. When "the network is down", people will treat it just like when the power's out today.

Using someone else's computers....

[thewiz]

I don't know about other folks in general, but I do know that I like my privacy. I'd rather have a computer on my desk, behind a firewall, where I can keep my private information private. It's all well and good to say that storing your data on Google or Yahoo or MSN allows you to access it from any computer on earth, but you run the risk of the computer you are at copying the information you access.

Wether it's a malicious keylogger, trojan, or simply the paging space / file, your information get copied to the PC at the internet cafe you are using. Suddenly your private information is no longer private. Any savvy computer-literate person could access that copy of your data. Give me a laptop or desktop where I can encrypt the data and only I have the decryption passphrase any day.

Re:Not surprised

[xami]

I somehow doubt Google is going that direction. Don't forget their main goal, to own all information and make it availible to everyone on this planet.
The idea of a GoogleOS doesn't really match with that.

Slow Down

[rokzy]

>they may make OS issues totally irrelevant by supplying everything anyone needs over the web from their mega-server-farm

yeah, try that line again when 90% of their stuff isn't (USA + Windows only) and/or beta.

Data Privacy

[obender]

I don't think that supplying all your personal information to Big Brother is a good thing. I know that here people always cheer for Google and boo Microsoft but this is a scary future.

I am hoping that with the arrival of broadband we can get to run our own web, email and im servers and not rely on the ISP for anything more than the transport layer.

Google should only have access to information you want to be public and nothing more.

Re:Google will likely try to do this.

[jarich]

In the future, the network will be just as dependable as any other public utility. When "the network is down", people will treat it just like when the power's out today.

Uh huh...

http://today.java.net/jag/Fallacies.html

Essentially everyone, when they first build a distributed application, makes the following eight assumptions. All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences.

1. The network is reliable

2. Latency is zero

3. Bandwidth is infinite

4. The network is secure

5. Topology doesn't change

6. There is one administrator

7. Transport cost is zero

8. The network is homogeneous

ASP?

[14erCleaner]

Hey, maybe they can become a big Application Service Provider!

Oh, wait, that was two buzzword generations ago. How many words are there for "mainframe" anyway?

Windows and all it's fscking disk i/o

[mc6809e]

Now, think about Gmail, which, in a broadband situation (I'll deal with that in a couple of paragraphs), is probably more responsive than Outlook;

Amen, brother.

It's a sure sign of bloat and poor MS engineering that a mail program like Gmail, running javascript, beats the hell out of Outlook running on a local machine.

It won't work and here is why...

[dfj225]

I don't think a plan like this will ever gain acceptance more than a small percent of computer users and here is why:

- The first thought that came to mind is business. The company I currently work at would have a heart attack if anyone suggested using a thin-client like solution with Google storing all the data. So I guess Google might sell their technology (like they currently do with their search servers) but this really wouldn't be any different than buying a file server and desktops.

- I don't see bandwidth getting fast enough in even 5 or 10 years to support a video or photo editing app. I can't even imagine having to upload a whole DVD's worth of video to Google before I could start to work with it.

- Another similar point would be application load time. Google Maps and other Axis based technologies load and run fast because there is a relatively small amount of JavaScript being sent to the browser. Could you imagine something the size and complexity of Microsof Word being sent to your browser everytime you wanted to edit a document? I think something like that would bring any browser to a crawl.

- What about customization? I like to be able to install new software on my computer. The few times I have had to deal with shared hosting for websites, it has been annoying that I couldn't install new software that I wanted to try out. Especially when my host had outdated versions of something like PHP or MySQL.

So, those are my thoughts. The only crowd I can really see this appealing to are the WebTV, just surf, email, and edit docs crowd. They might be really happy not maintaining a computer and having their data available anywhere. However, I think a small portion of computer users would fit into this category.

Personally, I would much rather just use VPN to access my home shares while on the road than have to use some sort of thin client.

What Google or someone else should really do is create VPN software that is easy enough to use that anyone can set it up. I think that would appeal to many more people than a thin-client. Plus as hard drive space gets cheaper and cheaper, it shouldn't be an issue to have the same software installed on your laptop as your desktop.

Re:It won't work and here is why...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think everyone is missing the gist of this...

I don't see anyone talking about actually *killing off* the desktop.

I see more applications like GMAil coming - small, light-weight applications that *can* be delivered over broadband. We're not talking MS Office or Word, and we're not talking photoshop. There will always be a need for hefty duty client-side apps. And DVD authoring? Over the web? I doubt *anyone* is thinking in that direction.

I can however see a lightweight text editor that can do simple layout and formatting, different font sizes, bullet points, insert a picture here or there, spell check, dictionary...Not very heavy at all - and what percentage of "joe user" really uses much more of word than that basic feature set? I'd bet you'll see a word processor of that nature delivered over the web in the next year or two.

Same with photo/graphics editing - nothing fancy, upload your pic, have some filters you can apply (contrast, brightness, red-eye, some fancy eye candy ones, etc, real basic), ability to crop, resize, cut, paste.

Gmail doesn't have a fraction of the feature set of outlook or lotus notes for example, but gmail does fit the needs of a large percent of computer users.

I also don't think Google is going to be targeting business users, that just doesn't make any sense.

But, having a basic set of applications that I can use from any web-enabled PC anywhere in the world? I definately think this is feasible....

Eh? One google to rule them all?

[Thud457]

So when's google going to take over sourceforge and come out with googlesource? Are they going to come out with a google public license? How are they going to pry Corbis out of Gates' hands?

Interesting theory. Do you trust google more than EquiFax? Or ChoicePoint?

Re:Google will likely try to do this.

[micromoog]

That's why I said "in the future". The power grid used to suck so badly that companies routinely kept generators capable of running their entire operation.

And I suspect that Google has learned a thing or two in their time about the Internet . . . they're far from "first building a distributed application".

Ending a monopoly by making it irrelevant

[IGnatius T Foobar]

No one ever managed to topple IBM's mainframe monopoly. It was rendered irrelevant by the arrival of smaller computers. It may very well be that Microsoft's monopoly on the PC Desktop never ends, but eventually nobody will care because the PC Desktop becomes irrelevant.

What all this tells us is that Network Computing was a good idea after all. One might even consider it inevitable. What was a bad idea was the Ellison/McNealy idea of Network Computing, where you had to throw away all your existing apps and go to 100% Pure Java applications across the board. This time it's being done right -- gradually, one app at a time, and with an easy to follow migration path. I hope it continues.

Maybe it wasn't yet time to railroad?

[LoaTao]

Just because something was tried and the implementation failed does not necessarily imply that the idea is bad or unworkable.

JIT compiler for js

[cyfer2000]

if the js code is compiled to your native code, it won't run too slow.

Re:Not surprised

[danheskett]

Except that people can easily buy enough power to satisfy their needs for a small premimum on top of what a terminal costs. Look at around at the so called thin-clients available. Even the thinnest of them has enough power to be a "fat-client" with substantial processing power.

Add on top of that people have routinely rejected thin-clients. Bandwidth and latency are big problems. I expect acess to my files and data with low latency. That means viewing my 8MB digital photos without waiting for part of all of it to come over a wire. I expect it to be available to me all the time.

Google is great, but Google is not above the law of physics. People - just average users - have 20 or 30 or 40 or 80 gb of data on their PCs. No matter how great Google gets, providing this amount of data quickly, securely, with low latency and high-availablity will prove out of reach. Even with Google's highly skilled team of programmers, making a decently response web-mail client, or map tool is a pain in the ass. And it's still below par. Despite how great Gmail is, it's not nearly a rich as Thunderbird or Outlook 2003.

One word

[fulldecent]

Latency

Monopoly?

[MikeCapone]

Since when are we happy about monopolies in the making? Google is cool now, but can we trust them to stay that way indefinitely?

Well, it's not done yet and they still have competition, but I'd feel a lot better if these next generation things that are supposed to be used by the whole internet community were open and democratic like Wikipedia and not close and proprietary - however cool they are - like Google.

NOT for games!

[DigiShaman]

Games can never have enough resources, at least for 3D games. It all comes down to the best visualization and how smooth of a frame rate you can obtain that will in turn provide the best experience. If and when google will provide the brute force CPU and GPU cycles needed to run Doom3 smoothly via dumb terminal, let me know. Until then, there is a reason the latest and greatest video cards are so damn expensive. And I REALLY doubt google want's to foot the bill for gamers and their never-ending quest for a newer and better visual experience.

Re:Not surprised

[BobTheLawyer]

I don't agree.

By publishing your website, you are granting an (implied) licence to the world to create cached copies of the website. Were this not the case, your web browser's cache and your ISP's proxy server's cache would in constant copyright violation.

The argument Google would use is that they're just going a step further in having a publicly available cache. Whether the implied licence extends to this is arguable: I have no special knowledge of US law but under English copyright law they have a pretty good case.

Re:Not surprised

[Donny Smith]

>The DMCA specifically allows caching, so it's more in a gray area than blatent (sic!).

It allows cashing if the content is unchanged as in proxy server cache, not as in Google's permanent and modified cache.
See:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dm ca_law_1998102 0_pl105-304.html

" the material described in paragraph (1) is transmitted to the subsequent users described in paragraph (1)(C) without modification to its content from the manner in which the material was transmitted from the person described in paragraph (1)(A);"

why does this require a subject

[manitee]

while this isnt the optimal choice for most people, it would be great for many. think about your parents.

my mom is 59. she uses email and the internet via AOL. she opens photo attachments and, maybe once a month, does something in word or excel. when her PC acts up, she doesnt know anything about fixing it, nor does she want to take the time to fix it. a thin client would be ideal for her.

on the subject of thin clients, dont write them off - i wouldnt be surprised to see office environments return to thin client setups. i am an admin for a 50 person central office with 80 remote locations who all connect to us via terminal services. all their apps are web based, and there are no privacy issues since this is all company property and all usage should be work related. i am single handedly able to successfully administer a nationwide network of over 80 locations for the simple reason that all of the big iron is right here next to me, and all of the clients can be replaced within 15 minutes.

What a Tired, Dead Argument from Long Ago

[Ralph Spoilsport]

20 years ago, the idea was to put a dumb terminal in every home. The French built such a system and it failed.

Ellison was barking about "net computers" 10 years ago.

No one paid attention and for good reason. Why?

1. Bandwidth.
2. Storage Costs.
3. Computer costs.

1. Bandwidth
When the idiotic notion came up that broadband will kill the DVD, I responded here, noting that even in the middle of San Francisco, DSL is still painfully slow, and here it is, 2005. We're supposed to have jet packs by now, right? And TFA is talking about editing video over the web? Sure - in who's life time?

2. Storage Costs.
Continue to plummet. I remember when Ellison was barking about dumb terminals - RAM was extortionate. In '94 I bought a ONE GIGABYTE drive from HP for $580 and thought I'd gotten the deal of the decade. Now, for $80 less I can get a MiniMac and dozens of time more drive space PLUS a pile of RAM and processing power that totally smokes my creaky old Centris 650. I can now put on the end of my keychain what used to be a huge SCSI drive. Storage is no longer a problem.People not backing their stuff up is another issue, but it's not from lack of cheap drive space.

3. Computer Costs.
Which brings us to the cost of computers - I'm typing this on my old Blue and White G3 Yosemite. It's running in OS 9.2 and will do so as long as I own it. Why? Because it works. It has 80 gigs of drive space on three different drives - plenty of room for email and back up. I can do basic image editing in Photoshop 6, layout in FreeHand 9 or Quark 4, HTML editing in Dreamweaver 4, and ya know what? It fuckin' works. You can pick up a computer like this on eBay for next to nothing. What "Dumb Terminal" is going to compete with that? I saw someone dumping a perfectly good Dell P3 / 700 on the street last month - he was moving and couldn't give it away. I didn't want it - I already have my G3 / 350...

There is no economic incentive (as computers drive down in cost), there is no technical advantage (as storage drives down in cost) and, crucially: the bandwidth simply isn't there, period.

And won't be - for a very very long time.

Therefore: it's a dumb idea, it won't work, and it's as good as dead in the water.

TFA is full of crapola - typical techno-positivist day-dreaming nonsense - people who smoked the dotcon crack pipe and believed.

Idiots.

RS

Re:Not surprised

[Sparr0]

Google's cache is available to the public. Anyone can use it, including their competitors. Thus it does not provide a commercial advantage to them.

Re:Not surprised

[mrighi]

Don't be so near-minded. Twenty years from now we might be laughing at statements like this as we download data over fiber-optic cables faster than current hard drive seek/read times.

Re:Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

By publishing your website, you are granting an (implied) licence to the world to create cached copies of the website. Were this not the case, your web browser's cache and your ISP's proxy server's cache would in constant copyright violation.

I disagree. There is no license implied there. You are allowed to make a cached copy on your own computer due to fair-use doctrine. You don't have or need a license to do that.

As for the ISP's proxy server cache, it may very well be in violation, as well as Google. But the truth here is that there is little motivation to do so because few are hostile to Google, and secondly it is easy to avoid being cached (or indexed).

MOD parent up.

[jimi the hippie]

You've got it to a certain extent. I think that this will not only apply to the Third world, but any company in the US. They can put Word Processing, E-Mail, Web browsing, and everything else into a central server. The server would be running an OS developed by Google. Then they could have a very simple "thin client" running on each person's desk. This would save the company a LOT of money, plus it would be easy to backup all the data because it would all be on one machine.

Re:Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

;-)

You know, adding a smiley doesn't absolve you of the responsibility for saying in your comment just *what the fuck it is*. Now that the link is dead, all we have are a bunch of comments saying "Wow, that's cool!", without any indication as to what the hell is so cool.