The Quarterly: The Internet has radically changed the world. What are the kinds of developments you see ahead?
Eric Schmidt: When people have infinitely powerful personal devices, connected to infinitely fast networks and servers with lots and lots of content, what will they do? There will be a new kind of application and it will be personal. It will run on the equivalent of your mobile phone. It will know where you are via GPS, and you will use it as your personal and social assistant. It will know who your friends are and when they show up near you. It will remind you of their birthdays. It will entertain you. It will warn you of impending threats and it will keep you up to date. It will use all of that computing power that’s in the cloud, as we call it.
So, for example, when you go to the store this device helps you decide what to buy at the best price with the best delivery. When you go to school it will help you learn, since this device knows far more than you ever will. So this vision of nearly infinite computing power, network power, and these powerful devices is the basis of the next generation of computing.