Schmidt called netbooks the "next generation" of the low-cost machines produced by Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. "Products today are not completely done. Things are missing.
Such devices could rule the world, Schmidt said, because cloud online apps are the future. "Cloud computing is one of those changes that are going to happen - regardless of whether or not companies in the ecosystem want it to," he said. "IT systems today are so slow in the way that they evolve...We now have an opportunity to build a whole new generation of applications that cycle much faster."
Just as predictably, Schmidt began his Morgan Stanley Q&A by insisting that Google's search monopoly could vanish at any moment. He pointed to a recent snafu where Google's search engine blocked access to the entire internet.
"We had a bug recently where we put a malware statement out for users, and in that time, Yahoo! searches gained very, very quickly," he said. "It looks like people will move very quickly from one search engine to another, for any number of reasons. We've looked at this very carefully."
"Eventually, it will make sense for operators and so forth to subsidize the use of netbooks so they can make services revenue and advertising revenue on the consumption. That's another new model that's coming."
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