The Official Google Blog: Cloud computing: the latest chapter in an epic journey: It’s extraordinary how very complex platforms can produce beautifully simple solutions like Chrome and Chrome OS ...... but then there are very few genuinely new ideas in computer science. The last really new one was public key encryption back in 1975. ..... But the web is not really cloud computing—it’s an enormously important source of information, probably the most important ever invented. One major web innovation cycle happened in 1995—remember the Netscape IPO, Java and all of that—ultimately leading, in 1997, to an announcement by OracleI am working on a blog post called Google stole my idea. I am only half kidding, of course. I first thought of the IC concept in 2000. That was before I ever ready about Larry Ellison's network computer vision, something he had talked about apparently a few years before that.
Image by wicho via Flickr (and bunch of other people including myself) called “the network computer.” It was exactly what the Chrome team at Google was talking about on Tuesday. ....... Moore's law is a factor of 1,000 in 15 years—so 15 years ago versus today, we have 1,000 times faster networks, CPUs and screens. ...... Asynchronous JavaScript XML, or AJAX, came along in in 2003/04, and it enabled the first really interesting web apps like Gmail to be built. ...... LAMP, which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP—and Perl, Python and various other Ps—evolved as a platform for the back-end........ Instead of building these large monolithic programs, people would take snippets of code and aggregate them together in languages like Java and JavaScript. ..... As usual, Larry and Sergey were way ahead of me on this. From my very first day at Google, they made clear that we should be in the browser business and the OS business. ...... we've gone from a world where we had reliable disks and unreliable networks, to a world where we have reliable networks and basically no disks. Architecturally that’s a huge change—and with HTML5 it is now finally possible to build the kind of powerful apps that you take for granted on a PC or a Macintosh on top of a browser platform. ....... a small team, effectively working as a start-up within Google
The IC vision is what I hung on to as my straw when the dot com collapse happened.
I moved to NYC in 2005 to take a crack at it. But I got sidetracked by the democracy movement in Nepal. It took a few years of my life. Then Obama was a distraction, but it felt like a once in 500 years opportunity. It was personal therapy to me after some of my experiences at high school and college. Therapy ended in a nightmare, but that is another story.
Early in 2008 I raised the round one money. We ended up disassembling the team a year later for various reasons. But the Chrome OS laptop is what I had in mind. What if there had not been interruptions? I think I would have pivoted. I would have been like, I am glad we no longer have to worry about hardware and software. Let's go into wireless broadband supported by ads. Let's leverage the snooping technology.
The most important segment of the IC - Internet Computer - vision stays unfulfilled. But I have already moved on. I am now actively working towards a microfinance startup: for profit, high tech.
The pace of mobile phone penetration in the Global South and the fact that two billion people are projected to be online by the end of this year tells me things are happening fast enough.
I have talked of internet access as voting right. Getting into microfinance is more like winning elections and governing, actually making things happen. I am happier in microfinance than I was in the IC space. I get to leverage my number one strength: large scale group dynamics.
Larry Ellison's Network Computer Vision
JyotiConnect: Executive Summary
Google Chrome Operating System: Pinging Bing
BusinessWeek 1995: The Software Revolution: The escalating demands of bloatware drive sales of ever-more-powerful computers, creating an unholy alliance between software and hardware makers. This fall, for example, millions of consumers who want Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95 operating system will spend billions to trade up to PCs using Intel Corp.'s speedy Pentium chips. ....... Wintel is also a huge improvement over the bad old days when customers were locked in to IBM or Digital Equipment Corp. machines because they used software that ran only on those brands. ...... The force that's shaking the foundations of the old software business is the Internet and its graphical subnetwork known as the World Wide Web. First, the Internet's TCP/IP communications standards made it possible for tens of millions of computers using different operating systems and applications programs to ``talk'' with one another ......... ``On the Internet, nobody knows you're a Mac.'' ..... The next step will be critical: using the Web not only to make the same information available to all wired machines but to let them share the same programs. If that can be done, there will be a basic shift in the software business no less seismic than the fall of the Berlin Wall. ...... the Internet, says Eric Schmidt, chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems Inc., ``enables the deconstruction and the construction of a new economic model for the software industry.'' ...... The Web ... ``is a serious threat to Microsoft's ability to set standards for important parts of the industry.'' ...... Gates has made it clear to all his troops that the Net and the Web are now Microsoft's highest priority. ...... ``The Internet is nothing but good news for software,'' he said. ``When you get low-cost communications, you want more software to help people share information and collaborate. It means the PC is a more relevant device to a broader set of people.'' ...... Microsoft finds itself in a position similar to that of IBM a decade ago, when the PC
Image by Oracle_Photos_Screenshots via Flickr revolution began threatening the mainframe business: Even as he tries to move into the new market, he can't afford to let up on efforts to stay on top of the old industry. ....... The breakthrough technology? It could be a programming language from Sun Microsystems called Java. ...... ``The Web turned the Internet into a giant disk drive" .... ``Java turns the Internet into a giant processor.'' ...... Object technology turns conventional software on its head. ..... With object technology, information and programming are merged. .... Object programming is ideally suited for the Net era--when computers will function more as multimedia communications devices and less as glorified calculators and typewriters. ....... Steven P. Jobs's NeXT Computer Inc., for instance, is reorienting its object-programming software for the Net. ``The two most exciting things right now in software are objects and the Web,'' says Jobs. ...... ``The Internet changes everything'' ...... When there is a new version of software, ``you turn on your network computer and it will show up. There is no store to go to. There is no installation,'' says Ellison. ...... an electronic catalog that includes a Java applet for ordering ..... The latest Microsoft Office suite ... needs 55 megabytes of disk space and a Pentium-class computer to run at peak form. ..... For corporations, this has helped push the annual cost of supporting a PC user to about $8,000 ..... simple, streamlined operating systems that call out to the Net for additional features as needed. ..... One of the most fervent supporters of the idea is Oracle CEO Lawrence J. Ellison. Oracle has developed an operating system that takes up just 1 megabyte of main memory, Ellison claims, vs. as much as 8 megabytes for Windows 95. ..... ``I really think that Windows 95 marked the zenith of the personal-computer industry.'' ..... Microsoft ... Its sprawling 18,000-employee organization may be the most potent software-development force on the planet, but it is also the world's biggest bloatware factory ...... In Win95, a big chunk of the 15 million lines of code are there just to ensure compatibility. ....... The Java mania grates on Gates. ``What's new about [Java] vs. other programming languages? Why is BUSINESS WEEK writing about Java?'' he say
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