The Glocal Citizen

Internet 2019 – Google’s Nikesh Arora at IE B-School (Madrid) April 2, 2009

I had the opportunity today to attend the conference of Nikesh Arora, President of EMEA Operations for Google, at IE Business School in Madrid. It was titled “Internet 2019: The Road Ahead”. Here I share a summary of what I believe are the most important ideas from the conference.

I. Reflection: 10 years ago

During the first part of the conference he invited us to reflect on how we used to do some things 10 years ago compared to how we do them now. He reminded us of objects and habits that used to be so important in our everyday life and now they are gone because some other innovation has replaced them. Some of the examples used were the VCR/video tapes, cameras with photographic film, traditional TV channels and local buying habits. He also reminded us of how was our own adoption process of technologies that are so common today, like the e-mail, social networks or online video.

He then challenged us to think of habits and objects we use today that might disappear 10 years from now. The audience suggested a few (keyboard and mouse, newspapers, desktops). We all laughed a little bit, and Nikesh said, “the more you laugh about the possibility of living without a particular technology, the more likely it is that you won’t be using it 10 years from now”.

He then quoted Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

“Regarding the Internet, we are the transition generation. We know both how life was before the Internet and how it is now with the Internet, but our children won’t.”, he then said before moving into the second part of the conference.

II. Trends: 10 years from now

The second half of the conference was a small glimpse of Google’s Nikesh Arora’s vision of the Internet in the year 2019. He developed this vision in five trends:

1. Everything in the Cloud

Technology innovations used to target companies (PC’s, software, LAN’s) and recently innovations have been targeting the consumer. These new consumer-oriented services are all served from the Internet or “in the cloud”. Gradually, companies from multiple sectors will also transfer most of their processes and infrastructure to the cloud because it’s cheaper, it’s faster and it’s where all the innovation is taking place.

2. Creative Collaboration

The creative process is changing. It’s no longer about getting a bunch of people in a room and then wait for them to come up with a new product or service. The creative process is now open, dynamic and involving the customer in all stages of development (perpetual beta).

He used as example Paulo Coelho’s Experimental Witch Film Competiton in which everybody is invited to contribute with input for the creation of a film based on one of Coelho’s books.

3. Smarter Search and Better Visualization

There’s an outstanding amount of content being created every moment, (281 exabytes or 281 billion GB of data were created, captured and replicated in 2007 according to an IDC report). Smarter ways to search, organize and cluster information will need to be developed to be able to handle this massive universe of data. These searching innovations have to be complemented with better ways to visualize information to understand it better and make it more useful. He used as example a fragment of a “TED talk” that I like a lot featuring Hans Rosling debunking third-world myths with a remarkable stats visualization software.

4. Real-time Translation

As the world becomes more globalized, the need for tools that help us understand each other across language barriers grows. Technology will need to be developed that lets us all communicate in our own language and be able to understand each other at the same time.

5. Massive Personalization

Services will be delivered in a more personal fashion, adapting to individual needs, personalities or lifestyles. He used a very funny example of a customized video generated during the last US Election.

III. Questions

Four very good questions were asked by IE students to Nikesh Arora.

1. He was asked what he thought about privacy issues caused by Internet companies having too much information from the users.

He said that users in the new Internet reality are strongly opinionated and have the means to put pressure on companies that handle their information in a way they don’t approve. Also, companies’ most valuable and important asset is customers’ trust, and they will always take care not to betray it

2. He was asked about Google’s position on the high carbon footprint of Internet companies that rely heavily on energy-consuming data centers.

He said this challenge can be approached in multiple levels. Google, for example, places data centers right next to energy generation sites to save the estimated 40% of energy that is lost in the transportation process. In another level, he thinks that there is a transition towards doing a lot of things more efficiently thanks to the Internet that will ultimately counterweight this footprint with considerable energy savings.

3. He was asked about his opinion of Internet platforms having a lot of users but not being able to find the right business models to be profitable.

He said that the new dynamics generated by the Internet are forcing companies in a lot of sectors (particularly those dealing with content) to reinvent themselves, but he thinks it’s far better to try to find the right business model when you have a growing user base than trying to find it with a declining demand.

4. He was asked how he thought the global financial crisis would affect the development of the Internet.

He believes this crisis, like the ones before, is part of a normal cycle in the economy, and it will not affect significantly the long-term trends that the development of the Internet is following.