Google says desktop PCs will be irrelevant in three years

Google’s European sales chief, John Herlihy has aired his views to a conference audience he believes desktop PCs will be “irrelevant” in just three year's time.

Herlihy is convinced improved smartphone technology will completely eclipse the humble desktop PC giving his logic “in Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”

Speaking at the Digital Landscapes conference Herlihy’s comments echoed Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s talk at the recent Mobile World Congress 2010 at which it was announced Google would focus its attentions on computing and connectivity through mobile means: “Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible," said Schmidt. "Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later.”

Herlihy went on to explain the reasons why he believes Google has experienced "business success". As well as “relentless brutality and execution” and determination to employ the best people he said a willingness to "celebrate failure" also helped the company achieve its goals. He gave the analogy: “the Roman legions used to send out scouts in different directions. If a scout didn’t return, the army didn’t head in that direction. We seek feedback at every opportunity on something – we either kill it, adjust it or redeploy resources.”

Maybe that goes someway to explaining Google’s logic behind it’s recently launched social-networking component for Gmail, Google Buzz. A feature pounced on for its privacy flaws.