Marshall Brain's Blog

I have written before about how frustrating it can be to own a computer, and I have had my share of things like hard disk crashes. But this weekend, as I was helping a yet another friend recover from a persistent XP problem, it hit me again -- the world must be wasting millions of man-hours every day on various computer problems. There must be a better way.

The solution lies in the ultimate reductionist strategy -- The Google Machine™. The thing that will fuel the Google Machine is the fact that computing hardware is getting so inexpensive, combined with the fact that broadband connections are nearly ubiquitous.

Here's how the Google Machine will work:

1. Google sells extremely low-cost machines in places like Wal-Mart. Maybe these machines cost $200 in the desktop version. [It is also possible to imagine a scenario where the hardware is free -- see below.] You can attach USB devices like printers to it if you like.
   
   
2. These machines would behave exactly like video game consoles in that you pull your new Google Machine out of the box, plug it in and it is ready to go with everything pre-loaded. For the user it is truly "plug and play".
   
   
3. The Operating System is remarkably bare bones or non-existent (and it is completely irrelevant to the user). It is possible that these machines would not need hard disks -- the machine might boot from a ROM and then load updates from the network. In that case, the hardware is essentially a cheap motherboard and a cheap processor with some RAM. Or maybe it needs a 20GB disk as a scratchpad/buffer/cache area. The user could care less, but the simplicity of the hardware will keep the cost of the Google Machine way down.
   
   
4. Google redefines the role of the browser. Right now we think or a browser as an application running on a desktop. In Google's definition, the browser is the desktop and it can run web-enabled applications loaded over the Internet as well as viewing web pages.
   
   
5. Google supplies you with all of the applications that you need -- word processors, spreadsheets, photo management, email, etc. etc. These applications come pre-loaded on the machine's hard disk or load from the Web as you need them. However...
   
   
6. ... When you open or save a file, nothing lives on your hard disk. Instead, everything flows between your machine and an Internet file area that Google manages for you (let's call it GoogleSpace). Google might initially give you 10 gigabytes of space to store your documents, photos, videos, songs, etc., and you ask for more space as you need it.
   
   
7. Because all of your files live on the Internet, you can access all of them from anywhere. You are completely freed from the restrictions of a desktop machine. You never have to back your machine up, diddle with the operating system, etc. Your files are safe in GoogleSpace, meaning you never have to worry about them and they are always accessible from wherever you are. Everything is automatic.
   
   
8. In addition, if you ever have a problem, you completely reset your hardware, let it reload a fresh copy of what it needs from the network and then it is fine, OR... you simply throw the hardware away and get a new box. Since every one of your files is stored in GoogleSpace, your files are always safe.

By doing this, all of the problems and hassles that most normal people have with their computers completely evaporate. Your computer becomes an appliance like a TV or a video game console, and you never have to worry about it. Your files are always safe.

How do you pay for it? Google might charge a monthly fee of $20 or $30 per month. In that case, the hardware is likely to be free or extremely inexpensive. Or you buy the hardware and pay maybe $10 per month for the applications and storage space you need.

This solution would work for the vast majority of people who use computers today. It would make their lives significantly better by eliminating all of the problems and data loss that go with owning a desktop machine or laptop.

It would not work for people who are currently playing games like Half-Life 2 on their PCs. However, the culture of PC gaming will shrink anyway because the new batch of consoles will be so much more powerful than a desktop PC. Maybe Google ends up selling its own game console version of the Google Machine (for example, a Google Machine built into an XBox). It is also easy to imagine small wireless handheld versions of the Google Machine that completely replace PDAs. A wireless laptop version would also be available for slightly more than the desktop version.

Google does not have to be the one doing this, although it seems the most likely candidate. Microsoft could pull this off if it had the vision to see the writing on the wall. Apple could do this. Or perhaps a new company forms to do it. Whoever does it is irrelevant, however -- this product is inevitable within the next two to three years. There are simply too many people wasting too much time and spending too much money managing desktop PCs. Owning a computer should not be this hard. Instead, it should be as easy as owning a video game console.