“Just 20 years ago the one really big player was Microsoft.,” says former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “Microsoft has now been joined by four other very large companies each of which is run cleverly but in a different way. We benefit from that brutal competition. The reason it’ll be different in 20 years is because artificial intelligence will create a whole bunch of new platform winners.”

Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, who is launching a new podcast today, discusses how AI will spawn a whole new batch of tech platform winners:

AI Will Create a Bunch Of New Platform Winners

Just 20 years ago the one really big player was Microsoft. Microsoft has now been joined by four other very large companies each of which is run cleverly but in a different way. They have different ways in which they win and they lose. We benefit from that brutal competition. Look at what you have in a mobile phone. The competition between Android and IOS and Apple phones and the Android ecosystem has brought a supercomputer into your pocket. That’s going to continue.

The reason it’ll be different in 20 years is because artificial intelligence will create a whole bunch of new platform winners. Remember that the way this works is the US establishes global platforms that everyone else uses. We are forgetting that it is US leadership at the platform level, whether it’s Google or Apple or what have you, that has brought us to this point where we have multi-trillion-dollar corporations that are leading the market.

Be Careful About Breaking Up The App Store Model

I don’t know enough about the Epic Games/Apple dispute because I left the board a decade ago. However, the important thing about the app stores is that they provide some level of security, branding, and protection for the user. In China, for example, Google does not have a single app store because of regulatory issues. So there has always been issues of is the app that you’re using certified and so forth.

I would be careful about breaking up the app store model as it does provide some security and protection. We can quibble about how they’re managed but the important thing is when you use an app store you can rely that what’s on it is represented to be what it really is. Just think of all those viruses that you are not getting as a result of the app store.