In fact, argues Nicholas Carr, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review and author of the new book The Big Switch, those Web applications are signs of a fundamental change, a shift from the desktop to the Web that could redefine computing--and Google's business model.

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As these ecosystems expand, the world will move steadily closer to the ubiquitous-computing model envisaged by Xerox PARC's Mark Weiser.

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MySQL's lighter-weight database system may also fit into Sun's ambitions of becoming a major player in "utility computing, " a model of information technology infrastructure that pipes in software applications, processing and storage over the Internet rather than from a company's own data centers.

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That will be the most basic model, doing the computing and word processing tasks of today's PCs as well as such functions as accessing the Internet.

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Vertex labs are packed with workstations that tap 112 Pentium chips in parallel, capable of crunching 110 gigaflops per second, roughly the same computing power used to produce the National Weather Service's two-week global climate model.

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