Gmail and the future

As I said on my last post, I think that integration of Video and voice chat could be part of a greater strategy. What would be that strategy?

In my opinion it should have two parts.

The first one would include the ability to search on your communications. Not only your written communications, but also your oral/video communications. The technology is not too far. We can today search on Youtube’s speeches, probably thanks to GOOG 411. The only thing Google would need would be vast amounts of disk space, as video and voice need far more resources than pure text. Anyway, considering the prices of data storage, I don’t see it too distant in the future.

The other element in the strategy is related with the ubiquity of communications. Every single day, less of our communications takes place through our desktop PC, and more of them goes through cell phones, netbooks and other on-the-go devices. Being tied to what telecommunications companies allow is “dangerous” (for Google), because sometimes, their interests are different from Google’s ones. That’s one of the reasons why Andoid is so important, and, as I mentioned on my first comment about this topic, why it’s important for Google that white-space spectrum is open.

With those two things in mind, you would have your communication center in your pocket all day. You could instantly remember every word you said or was told to you by phone, video or email.

Obviously I know that this strategy would have privacy problems. No more than today with the mail, but people would be more conscious.