Seasoned investors are familiar with “The trend is your friend”. Knowing the current trend is vital to search engines consultants, website owners and investors, especially those with their 401K’s and life savings invested in these companies.

Since this author’s last article, some noted events have transpired which deserve further comments.

Industry watchers should be well-versed with IBM and the seven dwarfs (Sperry, Burroughs, GE, CDC, NCR, Honeywell and RCA). In much less than a lifetime, these seven computer challengers became mere footnotes.

Then the mighty IBM had a few stumbles and finally surrendered the mettle to a young upstart from Redmond.

Microsoft reigned supreme in the 1990’s when it first introduced the Windows platform.

Are we to see to passing of the mettle to Mountain View when Bill G. recently commented that those guys (Google) are operating from a higher I.Q. level. This admission from Redmond given its brainpower assets is surprising.

Besides, Microsoft’s Office and Internet Explorer will embrace open standards like XML. Perhaps, Redmond could reseize the initiative, by declaring their crown jewels as open-source instead of surrendering bit-by-bit and thus see their once-mighty empire wither away into insignificance.

On May 31, 2005, Google announced its Summer of Code initiative to reenergize the open source community. The estimated $1 million outlay ($4500 for each successful applicant) is less than Google’s profit in two hours. From the chatter in various forums, this initiative will be a resounding success.

This is a foraging party’s raid involving about 200 young, fervent, energetic, idealistic cadres, excuse me, programmers. This is not what the powers in Redmond wanted to hear – the proprietary Windows platform will be under renewed siege.

One cannot but admire such deft application of Chaos Theory, best explained by the oft quoted example of a butterfly fluttering its wings in Peru and causing a tornado in Texas, a few months later.

Imagine the effects that will be unleashed when Google decides to increase this outlay by 100 times – an amount within normal R