Google Will Eventually Be Dethroned, Says Internet Pioneer
The father of the internet sees the end of the road for Google.
It will only be a matter of time before someone with a better idea or service will come along and brush Google aside.
That was the message Vint Cerf, also known as one of the fathers of the Internet, delivered to Pocket-lint in a one-on-one interview. He's currently one of Google's Vice Presidents and resident Chief Internet Evangelist, but he's most notably known for his part in creating the TCP/IP protocol that powers the Internet we know and love today. He's seen the beginning of the Internet and seemingly knows where it is going.
In the interview, he refers back to the mid 1990s when the Internet began to infiltrate our homes. AltaVista was the number one tool for seeking out new life in a wild, virtual frontier. Eventually Yahoo came along and took the search engine throne away from AltaVista. Offering additional services other than search, it thrived in tons of advertisement revenue until Google crashed the scene and seemingly knocked Yahoo out of the public eye. This is why Cerf believes that Google will eventually be dethroned -- because someone with a more robust service will eventually emerge, sword drawn and ready to do battle with the reigning Search King and its Android sidekick.
"There's nothing to stop someone from developing better technology than we have and to invent something even more powerful and efficient and effective," he said. "Which, of course, scares us. And that's good because it means we run as fast as we can to develop better tools for search in order to try to stay ahead of the game."
"We absolutely know that there could be somebody just like Larry and Sergey [Page and Brin of Google] on some university campus with an idea we don't have that could explode on the scene and take the business away," he added.
What he didn't say was the Google may not be knocked off the mountain for some time to come. Unlike its predecessors, Google has more than just a search engine, email system, chat client and news feed: it has two operating systems that connect directly to its cloud services. It has an entertainment network offering movies to rent, music to purchase, books to buy and read, and apps compatible with its Android mobile OS. It's reportedly gearing up to launch a Nexus tablet, wireless entertainment systems, and it's already infiltrated the HDTV market.
That said, the next heavyweight contender to take on Google will need an even bigger offering in order to draw loyal users away. But even the Father of the Internet can see the end of the road for Google because that's what history has dictated thus far. In some ways, it's interesting to speculate what the next search engine giant will bring to the table that Google hasn't already conjured up.
Cerf recently spoke at the launch of the Virgin Media-supported Life Online exhibition for the National Media Museum in Bradford. He indicated that he and his fellow pioneers didn't expect the "national network" to become so populated so fast.
"In 1973 we thought it would be expensive to build a national network," he told the audience. "You have to appreciate that we were living in a time of $50,000 computers that people time shared on. We predicted that there would be 256 networks, two per country, and then 16 million computers per nation. We ran out of that IPv4 32-bit address space in February 2011."
Does that mean we've finally reached the end of the Internet? Nope. Say hello to IPv6 and the 128 bits of virtual space it will offer in June 2012. "That's 34 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses and that number is enough to cover the foreseeable use of the internet - or at least until I'm dead and it's somebody else's problem," he mused.
Maybe that's where Google's true arch enemy lays waiting for the kill: out in the IPv6 universe somewhere [insert cheesy 50s sci-fi whistling background music here].

1.) Make a prediction that is almost guaranteed to happen someday.
2.) ???
3.) Prophet. :3
1.) Make a prediction that is almost guaranteed to happen someday.
2.) ???
3.) Prophet. :3
Everything but advancement. :3
Sounds like a very good thing to say when you have multiple countries investigating anti-trust law suits against them. Google isn't worried about investors right now as Google is raking in dough at this point, it's the government they are more worried about.
I know we made fun of Al Gore of that infamous "quote" a lot but he never really said "he invented the Internet". In fact, he is instrumental in pushing forward many technology initiatives during his tenure in the senate; many of which were in the 80s and 90s - perhaps a bit too old for some readers here.
I actually learned about this in a text book. Do a quick search and you should find some impressive things he has done, that Republicans twisted the context to make fun of Gore.
Me too. I read the article hoping to find his name in the actual article, not he comments. LOL
Al Gore would've invented the "tax cut", had he got elected. I still remember him saying the words "tax cut", accent and all. LOL
Didn't his wife invent ratings or something? LOL
a depression would take out apple, as its a luxery item.
intel would fall on hard times while amd would thrive, as amd has viable all in one cheap soltutions, however the power that intel has, people would still get it too.
microsoft wouldnt go anywhere, at worst they sell the os cheaper and cut proffits in half, something they could easily do for a long time and still pull out ahead.
correct me if im wrong, but this is the first time in history that we had a thing like google, that we had a site like face book, apple, well they wont fall without a depression, but they will stop being number 1 at some point.
i mean google is used world wide, is the first thing that pops into mind when you think search (never hard just yahoo it, or altavista it, but just google it is used all the time)
and face book is kind of an everyone is on it, and you cant leave it becuse everyone is on it, and so forth... i dont use it, but i tried to get friend to move to google+ got video chat... they just couldnt do it.
you are a moron. lets assume that you have less than 1kb of space, and you need to get x amount of infromation on something, you cut corners, im betting with the assumption it gets fixed when it can and its good enough for now.
lets see here, we currently have research that shows a 60tb hdd possible, does that mean that's the limit, or that that's the limit that we currently know.
look at the processor races, the ghz battle, the core, and the efficacious fights. you are working on a 333mhz cpu and its the newest and best cpu out there, do you plan down the road that there will be a 6 cpu computer running at 5ghz or do you make the code work with what you had?
for 1973 imagining how they did, they were probably thought to be insane for it.
They should have seen it coming
but this was 70 years ago
IPv6 is inheritedly flawed because it uses your network card's MAC address. This means that unless you spoof, you're stuck with one address, making it VERY easy to be banned from various sites, VERY easy to be tracked, and VERY easy to be targeted.
I'll be eagerly awaiting IPv7 or whatever the next protocol will be, because as things are currently, I prefer NAT, even if it does suck.
I mean you could say "Vint Cerf, The Internet" or "Vint surf the Internet".