Father of the Net sees future in 'space communications' 

Vinton Cerf is considered one of the fathers of the Internet, and is currently one of the vice-presidents of Google. His title at the US giant is 'chief Internet evangelist'.

To read a shortened version of this interview, please click here.

As one of the fathers of the Internet and 'chief Internet evangelist' at Google, you are definitely well-placed to tell us about the future of the Net.

Commercial Internet has only existed only for 20 years. It is not a very long time for an industry. My sense is that we still have a long way to go. Internet is still in an early stage of its evolution. Only 23% of the world is estimated to be online now, 1.6 billion people. That means that the chief Internet evangelist has 77% of the world to convert.

What the Internet will be like in 20 years?

There is good chance that in 20 years time we will be able to interact with robotic devices, or maybe people who are out there exploring the planets. It is an engineering project. It is no longer science fiction.

Coming back to Earth, what about network security? Will there be a September 11 for the Internet? Are we safe?

I would not say that we are absolutely safe. No engineer in his right mind would say that. 

On the other hand, I have been hearing about the collapse of the Internet since 1993 or earlier, but so far we haven't had any general global collapse. I admit we had some pretty bad problems because we made mistakes, when we processed files, for example. 

It's certain that the more we depend on networks, the more important it is to make them more resilient and make it possible to identify with whom we are transacting.

Many say that the future of the Internet is cloud computing (see EurActiv LinksDossier). Are clouds safe?

I don't think cloud computing is the future of the Internet. But there are clouds in the future of the Internet. Cloud computing is economically very useful, because you can dynamically allocate resources as you need. It is very efficient. 

As for security, I can say that for Google it is very important to build those clouds in a way that protects privacy. It is part of our design philosophy and has always been. If people do not trust Google's computers, it will be hard to have business. So we work very hard to make sure it is a trustable system.

When will the Internet overtake television as the main media format? Microsoft predicted that the shift will happen in Europe in June 2010. Do you have your forecast?

I don't. But let's consider that data rates are still low. If we were to increase capacity of the networks, it would take a few seconds to bring videos home. And you don't need streaming, because videos pre-recorded. Less than 15% of videos are live events. It is a completely different way to deal with videos. 

Internet companies do not make much money yet. YouTube is not profitable, for example. Is there another Internet bubble around the corner?

The dotcom boom happened because nobody paid attention to the business models. The people who started these companies did not understand the difference between capital and revenues, so they spent all their capital no matter what happened. 

But business models matter. I think today there are still good grounds to pay a lot of attention to business models. But to the question 'Is the Internet going to evaporate because of it?', my answer is 'no'. I hope people who invest in companies will pay more attention to what the business model of a company is. 

As one of the vice-presidents of Google, how would you react to accusations than Google is monopolising knowledge on the Internet?

The information that we organise is available to everyone. There is nothing we can do to stop a competitor from building better tool than we have. And we don't want to stop that. People might come to us because we do a good job. But that does not prevent them from going to someone else who is doing a better job. It would not be a surprise to me if someday a new search engine were to come up with better products than ours.

What's your take on copyright protection over the Internet?

I don't think we should take the view that anything produced on the Internet must be controlled by traditional copyright regimes, but we should open up the range of options for the producers of content to apply.

Is the access to the Internet a fundamental right? Should you cut access to the Internet?

It feels very funny to make a search a fundamental right. It is an artifact. In any case, what we decide is fundamental is not a Google decision. It's a global decision. 

Another key issue facing Google is the protection of private information, which is at the core of its business model. Is Google profiting from people's very low awareness of data protection?

There are conflicting perspectives, even in the European scene, about how to deal with these issues. What I don't believe is that we should force everyone to absolutely identify himself when getting on the Net. 

My feeling now is that we should acknowledge that privacy is so important, and people's ability to use the network without being forced to identify themselves has been a valuable property of the Net. 

On the other hand, when there is a transaction, we really need to know who we are. There should be very strong ways of authenticating who we are, so if we conclude an agreement, it is an enforceable agreement.

Is Google the new 'Big Brother'?

I don't think Google has a desire to be a 'Big Brother' at all. We fought court cases to prevent courts from accessing information. We will continue to take that view. Google cannot to be a Big Brother if it wants to be successful.

But by launching behavioural ads, Google is taking a new step towards the controversial use of personal data.

Google deals with IP numbers, not with identifiable people.

But if I hand out my personal data to access Google email or YouTube, then it is my personal behaviour on the Net which is tracked. Not just the IP number which might identify me.

Then use a nickname.