I saw a piece today in the “Australian” about Google’s audacious plan to make everything ‘cloud computing’ effectively getting rid of the PC as we know it, instead having everything we need via the web.

Well I for one hope and believe this will fail. Here’s why;

The biggest hurdle to jump is of course Microsoft. They simply will not allow it. Nor will Adobe, Apple and so on.

Users won't allow it. Imagine if Peugeot said they had realised that cars were a dinosaur and therefore they had stopped making them and their plan was for everyone in the future to be riding their nuclear powered bicycle.

The switch is just too big to throw and the momentum of the masses will not be moved. It’s not like the leap from pencil to keyboard.

Creativity will be stifled, as under the model, we would all be forced to work the same way. It won't be like the infinite number of monkeys. It’ll be like an infinite number of robots all with the same programming.

How will it make money for them? Advertising? Fabulous. I can’t wait to be editing a movie from a holiday in Bali and have popups exhorting the latest five star. It’ll be like the screen displays in the doctor’s surgery only everywhere.

And lastly (well I am sure there are more, but these alone I think doom the idea) is security and usage. I know people who won't trust online anything – banking, shopping, even email to a degree. So there are a fair percentage of people who won't use it plus a number, like my mother say, who just simply wouldn’t understand it. So won't use it, but will still use her PC for writing letters, memoirs etc. She doesn’t need or want the ‘net (at 84 years of age)

So Google, you have revolutionised the world with your search engine, Google Docs have their place, and Google Groups are useful. But this latest idea is just plain nuts. Go and put it bag in the wish list and concentrate on what you do well.