Forecast 2007: Destination Google?

"Since 9/11 the world has felt increasingly fragmented. Reading the papers, one senses that many Americans are emotionally withdrawing from the world and that the world is drifting away from America. The powerful sense of integration that the go-go-globalizing 1990's created, the sense that the world was shrinking from a size medium to a size small, feels over now.

The reality, though, is quite different. While you were sleeping after 9/11, not only has the process of technological integration continued, it has actually intensified-and this will have profound implications. I recently went out to Silicon Valley to visit the offices of Google, the world's most popular search engine. It is a mind-bending experience. You can actually sit in front of a monitor and watch a sample of everything that everyone in the world is searching for."

"So how does Google continue to outrun Microsoft? One of the answers is robust integration. The more you lock in someone horizontally across your applications, the more advantage you can get."

"It seems like Google could be working on integrating Google Talk into their social networking tool, Orkut. The Google Talk and Orkut teams are rumored to be in the final stages of the developmental integration, with news of the rollout this week. Google came to the decision to integrate the two tools when they noticed that users of Orkut quite frequently had their Talk application open.

Through the new Google Talk integration, Orkut users will be able to voice chat or instant message other users immediately. Users of Orkut, will also have their friends list show up in their GTalk users buddy list. Maybe this will pump up Orkut, and move it on up to competing with the likes of MySpace."