Paul Graham was talking about something that sounded like either a distributed compiler or search/computing engine in 2008 at PyCon[9] and it can be argued it i

Paul Graham was talking about something that sounded like either a distributed compiler or search/computing engine in 2008 at PyCon[9] and it can be argued it is something like the decentralized computing trend happening now. He said it would be "a byword for impossible" The thing about google is that, like Microsoft, it is a highly diversified company that does one thing and that is dangeroud. Peter Theil calls it a monopoly, maybe I would be a bit more delicate. Google and Microsoft have a ton of different products but each company really only sells 1 thing, a utility. Microsoft was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, and google was that for the web. For the reasons addressed in PG's article Microsoft is Dead, it is evident that needs change but utilities usually don't. If you read What Microsoft Is this the Altair Basic of? after this article, it is super short and basically says, the burden of proof is on you to not miss the next big idea. So much crazy shit is happening now it is difficult to say what will kill google. This essay was in 07', but it was too eary or too obvious, as he closes with. If 4 things killed google I would say they are: hardware: Hardware is definitely important, and we can argue about how and what context, but google doesn't build any. All their infrastructure, while massive, will be deprecated. privacy:"Don't be evil" is !== "Be Good". Advertising: Advertising is going to be A LOT less valuable, and the places it will be valuable have banned google. Decentralized Tech: No idea what the interim search engines will look like but it will be __________ then Artificial Intelligence. I think it is private search, where you buy computational resources and algorithims from a network but supply the seed data for your preferences and retain them. Probably BTC/PGP will replace DNS and you will send or lease your own googlebot and people will sell distributed search algorithims. While Chrome and the v8 engine make a pretty good google bot, people don't really trust google anymore which is why microsoft lost. No idea what it looks like, but it feels like someone is building it now. [0]http://www.paulgraham.com/altair.html http://www.paulgraham.com/altair.html [9]If you know what I am talking about, and you know what he means by saying the name for it is "a byword for the impossible", I have been trying to figure out what he meant for ages.