Google wants to make PC's history as they become ever more affordable?

Two interestingly contradictory posts on Techmeme today - firstly, Google wants to make PC's history:

Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals' personal data.

The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.

The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as "the most anticipated Google product so far". It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favour of "cloud computing", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.

Secondly, the cost of said PC's is dropping to ever more affordable levels, suggesting increased sales, not extinction (hat tip Nic Brisbourne):

Analysts expect PC sales to fall in 2009 for just the second time in the last two decades, with desktops falling even faster than they did in 2007 or 2008.

The only bright spot in the PC industry is netbooks. Analysts at the Gartner research company said shipments rose to 4.4 million devices in the third quarter of 2008, from 500,000 units in the first quarter of last year. Analysts say sales could double this year despite a deep worldwide recession.

So, who to believe - well, both to an extent - clearly as PC prices fall more people will buy them, and the smaller more mobile ones will also go head to head with the emerging high end Smartphone market. And clearly more people will put more stuff in the Cloud as it evolves, including Google's bit of it. But I'd bet against total Cloudworks in the short to medium term as:

(i) The minute you Google Google's own services you hit the issues with them - reliability, customer service, privacy etc etc - still not fit for use in my opinion.

(ii) Every 10 years someone gets up and tries to stuff the computer into the network, but most users so far have resolutely preferred some form of control of their stuff

(iii) Trends of the young. My teenage son and a lot of his friends all have their own multigigabyte portable hard drives with all their stuff on, they are as cheap as chips and part of their personae, so that is how it will run for the next few years in my view.

In the longer run Google may be right, but I suspect by then the cloud services will be reliable, commoditised and probably lower margin - and I suspect people will still keep some control over their personal processing. As a wise old Telco head onc told me, network businesses like to rent stuff, customers like to own it.