Google Stadia: Not just for gamers?

Google’s announcement of a cloud gaming service does far more than shake-up the video games industry. It’s part of a global shift in computing technology, in which in Google’s own terms, the data centre becomes the platform.

“This is a huge evolution for digital services, cloud computing and for digital communication,” said Ed Barton, chief analyst for entertainment at Ovum.

“The idea of the data centre becoming the platform shifts the compute demands away from personal devices to the network and the cloud meaning that developers are no longer bound by the limits of silicon at the end user. Instead, the amount of resource you can draw on is of Google scale. That, potentially, is extraordinarily powerful.”

Edge computing relocates computer processing from hardware devices in the home or mobile devices into data centres hosting massive compute firepower with data relayed over fibre networks or to one of the billions of new 5G cellular sites being installed worldwide (or combination of both) back to the user’s screen in next to no time.

Edge computing could reduce…