Google Brings Machine Learning to the Public Cloud

Maybe the machines won't take over, but Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, thinks machine learning might. The combination of cloud, crowdsourced information, and machine learning "will be the basis for every fundamental and hugely successful IPO win in the next five years," he said during this morning's keynote at GCP NEXT, the developer conference for Google Cloud Platform. Schmidt is prone to sweeping statements. But having watched computing transform many times in 45 years -- he was a Sun Microsystems bigwig when the company launched Java -- he said he felt qualified to predict that machine learning could lead to truly new innovations, the kind that can't yet be envisioned. Google is now offering the technology to cloud customers in the form of Cloud Machine Learning, an alpha application launched today.