This morning’s Observer column…

Many people believe that cloud computing is the logical next step for the industry. It’s the proposition on which the vast Google ranch has been wagered. (It’s also the reason why Microsoft – a platform-based company – is so eager to acquire Yahoo.) The prominent technology commentator Nicholas Carr has just published a book called The Big Switch in which he argues that what’s happening to computing now is analogous to what happened to electricity generation a century ago. Once upon a time, every industrial firm had its own generator; but eventually organisations plugged into a grid with cheap electricity pumped out by specialist generating companies. Something similar, Carr claims, is happening now to computing: it’s becoming a public utility, rather than a service that firms provide for themselves…