[Senator Bedfellow]

Larry Ellison said pretty much the same thing fifteen years ago - needless to say, we're all still waiting.

[lemura]

I agree - it's been bandied about for longer than 15 years. The problem, of course, is human nature. People are unwilling to change, until they do change. While the concept seemed logical, no one was going to toss their PCs for a Net appliance.

Today is a different story, and it's being driven by Google. Now that everyone is comfortable using its basic search, they're pushing their speciality services. As these begin to make significant headway in certain markets, such as libarary services, we will begin to see the impact on vendors selling vertical (ie MS) applications in these markets.

This is only the beginning - it's quite easy to see where it's going. Another obvious element is that Google is on a hiring binge - cadres of young PhDs are heading to Sunnyvale instead of Redmond.