"I don't have any desktop software on my laptop. None," Dodge says. Whether using Chrome OS or his MacBook, Dodge does his work on Gmail and Google Docs, he says. "I think there's a segment of the market that's ready to go completely Web, and I'm in that segment," he says.

The next wave of laptops may simply lack a Windows-like operating system, Dodge contends.

"I think we're not too far away from the day where your phone will be your computer. You'll walk into your office, take your phone out and plug it into a docking station, with a big flat screen and a keyboard. You decide which applications you want resident on the phone and which ones you want in the cloud and which data you want on the phone or in the cloud, or replicated between the two.

"There's a lot to do" before we get to that point, and Dodge's work with startups could help accelerate the move to Web-based computing.