But, I fear, it will not last. I fear it will be just like the last golden age where the cataclysmic bursting of the dot-com bubble ushered in the dark ages of the Microsoft empire. I am enjoying it while all these free apps are here but Google will have to become the ‘grumpy old troll under the bridge’ eventually. It comes with the territory of being a behemoth. This should not come as a surprise to anyone – Ibn Khaldun (one of the world’s first ethnographers!) described these cycles in the Muqaddimah in the 14 century. Microsoft was cool in the beginning but everybody loves to hate them now.

But there are some signs of hope in the following developments that even Ibn Khaldun would have trouble explaining:

Apple made SproutCore open source.

Google made Android open source.

The real tragedy will come when the U.S. finally crosses the Digital sub-Divide (i.e., universal high speed internet access) and most of these fun, cool, free applications will have been swallowed up and licenced by the big guys.