"To ALL- What happens if the Internet becomes our storage medium
as Larry Ellison and others are espousing? Supposedly we won't need
a hard drive anymore, we just download directly from the web. Would'nt
storage-media companies ALL suffer? Just thinking (always dangerous ; "
NONSENSE AND TOTALLY ABSURD, IMO. Will not happen in the
foreseeable future. And I will put my house up against Larry Ellison 's
cheapest car as a bet!
There are too many diverse applications for which computers are utilized
today and in the future that will not allow this scenario to happen.
There will be nich markets for "diskless" applications for security and
control reasons, for example. But for the general masses, personnal
storage will increase at a tremendous rate as a result of Internet and Intranet.
(Software distribution through the net will probably become very popular,
taking away cheap CDROM distributions - but will not affect high-capacity
storage market.)
Larry Ellison 's prediction of a "diskless" computing society is similar to
predictions made by experts in the early 1980 that the paper industry
would be decimated with the coming of personal computers - since all
information and data can and will then be stored on harddisks and floppies
instead of on paper. It was a sure thing that paper consumption
would drop drastically, according to experts.
Of course, to many people 's surprise, the exact opposite happened. Demands
for paper went up drastically as PCs become more and more useful. What the
experts failed to anticipate was the explosion of information, data, and new tools
made possible only by PCs - - such as speadsheets, databases, emails,
manuals/documents, etc., which drastically increased paper usage, even though
people do keep lots of stuffs on their HD and floppies instead on paper.
We are now at the beginning of another explosion of information and data - this
time much bigger than the last one -- and this time the whole world is involved.
The amount of information, data, and new tools available to folks from
the Internet are already phenomenal and will be much greater each year -- like
nothing the world has ever experienced or imagined. And like the paper
industry, the PC storage industry will benefit greatly and grow.
Personally, my needs for printing and PC storage have increased several
folds since I "discovered" AOL, then the Internet.
The Internet is a megatrend in the making, and people who can accurately
predict its impact will do very well. So it's a good and worthwhile subject
for longterm investors to debate and understand.
I once considered buying Oracle stock, but after listened to Larry Ellison 's
vision, I hesitated. I think he is way off on this one.
Young |
