In less than 30 years, the Internet has become such a profound part of our lives that many of us take it for granted. Today it has more than 2 billion users. Its available on Mount Everest and at the South Pole and half of adults in Europe use it every day. Four in five adults worldwide regard Internet access as a fundamental human right. And yet, were still just at the beginning of the Internet age. The Internet has transformed the way we access and share information, whether its the big issues of the day or just amusing things we come across on the web. Today, we share our photos on Facebook and Google+, our videos on YouTube, our tweets on Twitter and our thoughts on blogs. Governments are being made more accountable and people are being empowered through online communities. The Egyptian uprising succeeded in part because the web allowed people to organize and come together. After the Japan earthquake, millions of people took to the web to find loved ones and pledge financial aid. In Israel, you see day after day the power of social change driven by the Internet, which has become a key part of the public discourse in recent months. How has this been possible? One word: innovation. Or, better still, imagination. The playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, You see things and you say, 'Why-' But I dream things that never were and I say, 'Why not-' This relentless pursuit of the impossible is what lies at the heart of the Internets success. I encountered my first computer at high school. Back then there were time-share machines that used punch cards to relay information. Today the phone in my pocket is 100,000 times faster than my high school computer. Once, I would dream of having 1 megabit connectivity so I could do my e-mail. Today I want 10 megabit connectivity all the time so I can watch video or download music. Its a fair guess that 1 Gigabit will be Internet standard by 2020. But gadgetry and broadband speeds are less important than the Internets role as a driver of economic growth. In 2009, in Israel alone, the Internet economy constituted 50 billion shekels, which is 6.4 percent of Israels GDP. The Internet makes it easy for anyone with an original idea to set up a business and make it grow. Thanks to the internet, a family business established in Ashdod 33 years ago, which markets Dead Sea cosmetic products, now has most of its customers overseas. A bookshop from Rehovot reaches every corner in Israel and around the world. Thousands of small and medium-sized businesses are flourishing on the web, showing much faster growth than those not active on the web and creating 80% of new jobs in this sector. While Im optimistic that computer science and the Internet are forces for good, it would be wrong to ignore the challenges posed by the Internet age. How do we make the world more open while still respecting privacy? How do we ensure technology enriches rather than devalues culture and relationships? Innovation is disruptive but I am sure that answers to these challenges can be found. So what can we expect from the years ahead? Will technology continue to develop and amaze us, or have we reached the limits of possibility? A decade ago, few could have imagined we'd be working on driverless cars and inter-planetary Internet connections. I believe that we're only just at the end of the first act of the Internet era. Ive learned that no matter how big your dreams are, the reality will be even more amazing. I, for one, can't wait to see what's next. The writer is the chairman of Google.
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