The world in 2015 according to Google

marty2015 What will the future look like in five years’ time? That’s in 2015, the year of the next-but-one Rugby World Cup (a fact) and the end of the fourth estate (a prediction).

It’s also the year of some predicted cool technologies as already experienced by Marty McFly.

A little more real-world influenced, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has some down-to-earth predictions for the next five years which he discussed during a 45-minute interview at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 last week.

ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick posted a 6-minute video clip from Schmidt’s full interview – using a nifty tool called TubeChop – and in his post captured very nicely indeed the essence of Schmidt’s thinking that he articulates in that clip:

  1. Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
  2. Today’s teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years – they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.
  3. Five years is a factor of ten in Moore’s Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
  4. Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance – and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.
  5. "We’re starting to make significant money off of YouTube", content will move towards more video.
  6. "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."
  7. There are many companies beyond Twitter and Facebook doing real time.
  8. "We can index real-time info now – but how do we rank it?"
  9. It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that "is the great challenge of the age." Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem.

Interesting reactions in the comments to Marshall’s post with some alternative views on Schmidt’s future-vision.

In relation to point number 2 about teenagers, Schmidt also said one more thing:

Talk to a teenager about how they consume information. And remember – in five years from now, that’s your employee.

There’s the future.

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. Danny Whatmough

    Great overview, thanks Neville. Lots of interesting stuff here, much of which I agree with. For me, greater availability of faster, cheaper broadband/Wifi, the world over, will be key to progress. The government need to pull their finger out to get this moving.

  31. data recovery

    I am writing again about trends on the internet, because without a doubt this medium is changing rapidly and it subtly influences our way of communicating and even thinking.

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