Vint Cerf muses about Google role, broadband

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Date: September 16, 2005 2:59:06 AM EDT

Vint Cerf muses about Google role, broadband
By Anne Broache
<http://news.com.com/Vint+Cerf+muses+about+Google+role%2C+broadband/ 2100-1038_3-5864811.html>
Story last modified Wed Sep 14 09:18:00 PDT 2005

WASHINGTON--In his upcoming role as Google's chief Internet
evangelist, Vint Cerf says he'll act as a "bumblebee," transporting
ideas among the company's worldwide laboratories.
The Internet pioneer doesn't expect to be writing software or
directly overseeing a crew of engineers, but he does plan to be
"probing deeply into design philosophy, parameters and constraints"
that underlie Google's operations, he told CNET News.com on Wednesday
after an appearance at the FirstMile.US broadband conference here.
"What (CEO) Eric Schmidt had in mind is to go around helping people
understand both inside and outside of Google what Google's potential
is," said Cerf, who co-developed the basic communications protocol of
the Internet. "I want to have the opportunity to challenge people in
the labs with problems that need solving."

Cerf, 62, who most recently served as MCI's vice president of
technology strategy, is scheduled to start with Google on Oct. 3.

It's hard to say what Google's major focus should be going forward,
Cerf said. But, as he told CNET News.com earlier this summer, he sees
transmission of "spacely" information--that is, the capability to
locate, say, the nearest hospital or ATM from mobile devices--as a
critically important venture.

"I think what's very clear, based on the excitement associated with
Google Earth, is the exploitation of geographically indexed
information is clearly ripe for more development," he said.

He also plans to ask Google engineers whether they've investigated
the possibility of a voice-enabled search, which he says could be
useful "in places in the world where people aren't literate but can
speak."

And, naturally, he has a "bunch of other ideas," which he declined to
leak for fear of tipping off Google's competitors. His job
description, he admitted, is a "work in progress."

The next generation
As the keynote speaker at Wednesday's conference, Cerf mused about a
broadband-centric future in a wide-ranging conversation with the
audience.

He said he looked forward to implementation of the next-generation
Internet, whereby a broad spectrum of electronic devices could become
Internet-enabled. Wouldn't it be great, he suggested, to "order that
bottle of champagne that James Bond is now opening" simply by mousing
over on the same screen where a movie is playing?

Cerf said he has been approaching movie industry players and
encouraging them to view the Internet as an alternative distribution
outlet. "Some are responding positively, but some legal departments
are still having trouble swallowing the idea," he said.

He said he also found it "troublesome" that various states and
localities have been proposing and implementing measures to outlaw
municipally sponsored broadband networks. "Why on Earth would we
inhibit people from making their own investments--deciding, for
example, to float a bond?" he asked.

Cerf said he plans to continue his ongoing work with NASA and others
on interplanetary communications. He predicted the development of an
interplanetary backbone by the end of the decade.

"We're actually closer to this than it might seem," he said, noting
that 90 percent of the rovers currently positioned on Mars are
transmitting data through a "store and forward" system, in which data
is returned to Earth in spurts.

Still, he acknowledged, the sheer physical distance data must travel
poses a challenge to protocol design: "TCP doesn't work all that well
when round-trip times are 40 minutes."

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