Chinese content and social media to dominate web: Google's Eric Schmidt

Speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009, Schmidt outlined his vision of the future, claiming that how to rank real-time social content is "the great challenge of the age".

He also advised brands to listen to young consumers when drawing up their marketing strategies. "Talk to a teenager about how they consume media and remember in five years they'll be your employee," he said.

Here's an overview of Schmidt's vision as compiled by ReadWriteWeb:

1. Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.

2. Five years is a factor of ten in Moore's Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.

3. Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away.

4. "We're starting to make significant money off of YouTube," he said. Content will move towards more video.

5. "Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results."

6. "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?"

7. It's because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Schmidt believes Google can solve the problem of ranking that information.

Last week Google acquired mobile ad technology provider AdMob for $750 million in a bid to increase its mobile advertising presence.