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Ask HN: Predictions for 2009
17 points by DanielBMarkham on Jan 1, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 41 comments
It seems to be a common theme for people to make predictions for the coming year.

With the caveat that 90+% of these predictions are just blowing smoke, what do you see interesting happening in 2009? Stock market continuing to tank? Larger war in the middle east? SETI (or SETI on the Allen Telescope Array) finally getting a hit? New types of web apps taking off?




I'll happily blow some smoke. No guarantees - if you use this for anything serious you're insane.

1) SAAS will continue to grow and 2009 is the year where it will enter the mainstream with at least one IPO or major sell to a large established company.

2) Jquery will beat the other javascript frameworks and become the de facto standard for doing javascript.

3) Startups will stop focusing on B2C markets and move into the B2B market, primarily SAAS. Greentech will also surge ahead fueled be the Obama administration's policies and money.

4) Venture capitalism will be redefined. The mix of the plunging cost of doing a software startup and companies like Ycombinator and others will force VC's to move into greentech and away from software. VC's will face financial problems due to a slump in the market and at least one major VC will tank.


> 1) SAAS will continue to grow and 2009 > 3) Startups will stop focusing on B2C markets and move into the B2B market

Tightly coupled, IMO.

> 2) Jquery will beat the other javascript frameworks and become the de facto standard for doing javascript.

I hope not. Love jQuery. Hate monopolies. This is in much the same way that Rails defines Ruby to some people - I hope jQuery doesn't define JavaScript in the future.


> Love jQuery. Hate monopolies.

What's the meeaning of the word "monopoly" in a situation where breaking the monopoly means switching to another library? A library which, by the way, won't exist unless someone sees significant enough failings in the existing one to create an alternative, from scratch or through a fork.

Barrier to entry is the property which enables abusive monopolies, and in the open source world, is there such a thing?


Monopoly is probably the wrong word, but open source projects often do hit a local maxima which is far from optimal.

Consider emacs, for instance. Elisp sucks in many ways, and we could probably build a better emacs if we started from scratch. But it will be very tough to get from here to there.


I disagree with 3). If anything, entertainment websites will increase in usage because entertainment tends to be counter cyclical.


I predict that there will not be a great depression.

I do predict larger government involvement in health care. Electronic medical records is political gold (Bush, McCain and Obama all agree), and lobbyists will be involved. Invest in the medical records software vendor with the best political connections.

Some biostatistics software startups might hit it big too, depending on regulatory conditions (legal question: how do you datamine medical records without violating privacy?).


>(legal question: how do you datamine medical records without violating privacy?)

You make it a condition of using the service.

23andme + Google Health


Counter to what most people believe, I see development on Open Source apps and libraries slowing waaaay down in 2009.

- Most people are expecting a downturn uptick in open source development because there will be more unemployed engineers, but unemployed engineers need to pay rent, put food on the table, etc. so developing open source code will be a luxury like subscribing to premium cable channels. Instead, they'll be fully focused on finding work.

- Because being part of a team of people working on open source apps can help engineers get a job, expect people to 'join' projects for resume purposes but not really have the time (or desire) to participate.

- Desperate times call for desperate measures and when engineers are considering taking their substantial code base and making it open source, I believe they are less likely to do it during a bad economy simply because there are fewer ways to profit from that move.

- And, on a tangential note, I expect the biggest winners during 2009 will ultimately be the drug companies -- especially those that produce anti-anxiety pills.

My two cents.


I absolutely agree about the effect this will have on open source development. You're missing one big factor, though: Financial contributions. I know people like to pretend that money isn't important, but running open source projects gets expensive very fast when you try to bring people together for conferences / developer summits; and for large projects which are attacking complex problems (e.g., adding SMP support to an OS kernel) bringing people together in the same room is absolutely vital.

There was a big slowdown in the open source world in the years after the first dot com bubble burst; I have no doubt that there will be another slowdown in the 2009-2010 timeframe.


http://blogs.computerworld.com/who_writes_linux_corporate_am...


Hmm.. interesting predictions. :-)

I'd actually expect open source to gain more contributors if there's a whole bunch of unemployed software developers.

If you're looking for work, you're still going to have a lot of free time.

On the other hand, perhaps we'll just see an increase in users at sites like reddit and News.YC instead.

The thing I find most impressive about these sites is how they have managed to harness the power of people's free time. With more unemployment, I'd expect these sites to see some growth.

So I'm going to predict that we'll see more of these kinds of sites which are designed to harness the power of people who are bored... that's basically what web 2.0 is all about right? ;-)


This is fun, so I'll join in with some wild guesses.

- Most people in the news who are making 2009 predictions are overestimating the amount of new tech developments that will happen in 2009. With the economic situation, it will be a generally slow year.

- The personal health records space will heat up, with more hospitals and employers supporting HealthVault, Google Health, etc.

- The smartphone will have a great year, spurred by great competition, free platforms, hungry vendors, and features that appeal to customers. The iPhone will continue to grab market share from all other smartphone OSes (except Android).

- BlackBerry will stagnate and eventually (post-2009) go the way of Palm unless it changes its platform and strategy somehow. The outlook for Symbian isn't rosy either.

- Phone manufacturers will fall in love with Android. Even though Symbian will be free as well, phone manufacturers will be wary of using a rival's platform (Nokia). There will be a bunch of Android devices on the market by year's end.

- If Apple launches a large touchscreen device apart from a tablet laptop, it will be a failure. I just can't see this happening.


Ha...I'm already implicitly wrong on one of my points, since Palm just announced the Pre, so they did change their strategy. So let me rephrase that: BlackBerry will stagnate unless it does a Palm.


I'll go ahead and predict the obvious: the tech sector will finally crash hard in 2009 like all the other industries in America. Technology is typically a lagging indicator, as its still dependent on other large industries for most of its revenue.

Look to see 25-30% cutbacks in spending for the industry leaders (Google, Microsoft, IBM) and tech startups (the funded ones) to tighten belts for real this time.

It may seem bad now, but the tech sector all and all has been nearly immune to the economic downturn compared to other industries (retail, auto, financial, and real estate).

The tech companies that will contract least will be ones who cater to the entertainment market (games primarily).

Hopefully I don't sound too pessimistic. Personally, I've been happily employed throughout the downturn, making as much or more than I'd been getting in the boom times. However I have pretty good second hand view (from friends and family) on other parts of the economy so I'm bracing for the same impact on tech.


More Linux on the desktop, mostly via netbooks.

Solid-state disks will probably make average load and response times for desktop-based applications significantly drop for the first time since the introduction of the GUI. By the end of 2009, people will have different expectations of computer response time.

Perhaps more importantly, the increased read speeds will be used by someone to work some database magic that's never been seen before. I'm not sure what the killer app will be.

Android will not become dominant in any meaningful sense, but Google will sustain it as a platform.


1. Microsoft will buy a majority stake in Facebook

2. war between android and iphone, new iphone format released, between 20+ android handsets also released

3. facebook omnipresence, it's the new Yahoo!


I turned some out of these predictions into markets (<disclaimer!>) at my start-up http://askmarkets.com (</disclaimer!>), you may want to go put your (play) money where your mouth is, or crowdsource the probability of your forecasts by creating your own markets. Thanx for your attention.


I predict that...

1. Around 2009 Q3, the tech industry will be the first to recover from the downturn (before real-estate or auto).

2. Twitter will show dramatic growth, and it will be acquired by Google

3. Google Chrome will show growth, and scare the shit out of Firefox and IE

4. A new product/service will be release by Sun or IBM, that will gain major traction among the hacker community

5. Paris Hilton will get hitched


I predict that most predictions will be incorrect.


Including this prediction?


Liar paradox.


Not really, since it was "most" not "all."


Touché.


The US is going to be in a world of hurt. With Europe not far behind in the pain stakes. As always the countries with the most open markets will recover first.

Un-fettered markets are not the end solution but they are far better than the current politically controlled markets.

The handouts are damaging on two fronts. Firstly, it rewards poor businesses and stops better firms entering the market. Secondly, Joe Public who made dumb financial decisions are not punished but instead everything is done to allow them to make more damaging decisions later on.

The current debt loading of the US currency is not sustainable at the current levels of productivity. The US looks more and more like the USSR of the late 80s, running as fast as it knows and still sliding into bankruptcy.

I rather think we are looking at the end of the US as a going concern.

I'm hopeful that a short civil war will ensue and that out of that there might be the chance for a small Capitalist/Anarchist state to be founded.

Feudalism, Democracy, Fascism, Socialism and Communism have all failed the acid test. What other forms of government do we have? It would seem that Karl Marx was the last political thinker to offer a new idea for governmental organization.


You may be correct on some of this but I hope the results you are hopeful about do not happen. If you think things are painful and make no sense now, try projecting how painful and lost things would be with a civil war and following small Capitalist/Anarchist state reality. The dreamy "small Capitalist/Anarchist state" you imagine would be the minority, the Switzerland's. The majority of the world would be an uglier place.


I predict that the economy will rebound a lot more quickly than expected.


I predict you're in for an unpleasant surprise.


Probably. But one can hope.


I really think microsoft will get yahoo; these 17% layoffs would mean less overlap and more Capitol even though they already have enough...also I think this is to ask.com's advantage as they would have a stronger 3 spot


My predictions:

1. Web apps will start to die, and will start being replaced by web connected desktop or device apps

2. Integrated and restricted stores for distributing software by the major players

3. Some company that is still using spinning media will dissolve the entire line and switch to solid state media

4. Stock market will quickly rebound within the first quarter

5. TV will move mostly online


Since we are not even aiming for plausibility, I say Google will buy Apple and convert the iPhone to Android.


I predict I'll (finally) get married :)


- Chrome surpasses Firefox in market share

- Amazon Kindle 2 will be a huge hit and trigger a frenzy of copycats

- Facebook continues it's fast growth and a few other social networks stop growing and go on the decline. Facebook Connect gains big traction.

- OpenSocial becomes the largest platform on the Web around the end of 2009 after they clean up the garbage that's the current version


I think Twitter, Mint & Mobile Apps are going to reach a larger part of US society?


I already got my whoopin' for making this prediction! http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/12/microsoft-buys-37signals...


The mean time between Blu Ray BD+ cracks will increase as Macrovision starts deploying more sophisticated code. Slysoft won't give up by Dec'09, but people will be wondering why they haven't.


The era of subscription-based consumer internet services will begin.


3G cards beginning to be standard for laptops.


Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple.


I predict Apple stock goes up a lot.


Not if Jobs dies.




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