Future Newswire 
Google Inc, the uncontested leader in Internet services
announced it has shipped its 5 millionth “free” computer, only 14
months after starting up the “Free Computer Program”. The Google
Product Manager, Pierre Lindsely, stated he is overwhelmed by the
success of his project and they are trying very hard to keep up
with demand.
People now have to wait more than three weeks to get their
“G-Tops”, as they have become known as, instead of the three days
when the program started. Pierre Lindsely: “People will wait for
anything if it’s free, so I am not worried that this will impact
the enthusiasm for this product. We are attracting some new
suppliers and we will see the waiting time decrease gradually.” The
free Google computers come with a free broadband connection that
connects only to Google WI-FI hubs (aka as G-Spots). (cont.)
Continue Reading
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has joined
the ranks of those predicting the near-term demise of print
media.
In a recent Washington Post interview (see below), Ballmer
forecasts that, “In the next 10 the whole world of media,
communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down,
in my opinion.”
“There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not
delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers,
magazines that are delivered in paper form – everything get
delivered in electronic form,” he claims.
The reasoning behind this vision is rooted Ballmer’s belief that
“advertising, community and content [will] all kind of blend”,
resulting in a world in which we’re “going to have incredible
pieces of software that run out in the internet that know all about
the publishers that want to sell ads, all about the advertisers
that want to buy ads and all about the users who want to consume
content and advertising; and it sort of algorithmically puts them
together … and it gets smarter and smarter at delivering the right
ad at the right place at the right time. That’s a big business, we
think.”
Personally, I am in full agreement with this scenario, though I
do think that while they will seriously dwindle, some forms of
traditional print will still be around in 2018. But I think Ballmer
is spot-on in his argument that
newspapers and magazines will certainly be hard pressed to
continue their traditional existence(s).
(via Tech
Crunch)
