

Ask HN: Predictions for 2009 - DanielBMarkham

It seems to be a common theme for people to make predictions for the coming year.<p>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?
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mixmax
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.

~~~
lunaru
> 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.

~~~
TheWama
> 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?

~~~
yummyfajitas
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.

------
yummyfajitas
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?).

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

You make it a condition of using the service.

23andme + Google Health

------
smoody
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.

~~~
cperciva
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.

~~~
Herring
[http://blogs.computerworld.com/who_writes_linux_corporate_am...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/who_writes_linux_corporate_america)

------
lunchbox
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.

~~~
lunchbox
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.

------
jpcx01
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.

------
drinian
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.

------
mtw
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!

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nreece
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

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gtzi
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.

------
whacked_new
I predict that most predictions will be incorrect.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Including this prediction?

~~~
markbao
Liar paradox.

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

~~~
markbao
Touché.

------
ajmoir
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.

~~~
jhancock
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.

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

~~~
tom_rath
I predict you're in for an unpleasant surprise.

~~~
lionheart
Probably. But one can hope.

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redorb
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

------
markessien
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

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

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

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waleedka
\- 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

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

------
fnazeeri
I already got my whoopin' for making this prediction!
[http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/12/microsoft-
buys-37signals...](http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/12/microsoft-
buys-37signals-for-200-million.html)

------
tptacek
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.

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

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RK
3G cards beginning to be standard for laptops.

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rms
Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple.

------
qqq
I predict Apple stock goes up a lot.

~~~
jaspertheghost
Not if Jobs dies.

