The world is flat.

That seems to be what Thomas Friedman trying to painstakingly explain to the world. And he has reason to: the forces of market capitalism and its counter forces are ripping the socio-political-economic landscape as never beore. We are suddenly in the midst of a cataclysm......Mr Friedman exhort.....and we must do something. If Mr Karl Marx was the one who forboded it in his COMMUNIST MANIFESTO in 1848, Mr Friedman's, his new age avtar, in his works epitomises the "New Social Contract". Though the language is not biased, but they are caustic enough on the present "unwilling to change" Americans and Europeans. His admirations for the all movements (opensourcing, outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring, googling, gadgetry and the energy of the erstwhile non-economic blocks: CIS, China and India) not because of any bias, but on merit; makes his works one of the most profound works on the History of the Post-Cold war era. Cheers.

The most anticipated event today among netizens (still just gossip) is the launch of the Google OS which some mongerers are forcasting to be slated for y2k10. But as a pecursor to it we are winessing the advent of the a loosely bound pack of services that fits the jigsaw. Google OS, is envisaged to be a network based OS which would make the present storage repositories, application irrelevant. And given the enlightement of Opensource Philosophy and the power of Google, nothing seems far fetched.
Today, you login your pc (which logs you in to google as well) and on your explorer you open Gmail Drive rather than C: or D: drive to check for your documents and files. You are using Gmail & Gtalk, idling in your system tray for mails, messaging, audio and video chat. You are using Google calender for your appointments and wriltely for creating and editing your documents. The linky takes all your bookmarks and lanky provides your the "Open with.." & "Open programs" functionality functionality. The google toolbar provides you the desktop and net search functionality. You use Google Page Creator for creating web pages, Google earth & keyhole for location search and viewing, Picasa for image editing. Orkut is your net identity and online community. Google news, groups, blogger, translation provides you with the trivia. This all is besides a whole range of serach tools and features that made google a phenomena. Though we are missing a comprehensice multimedia & gaming solution, the wait won't be long . Also you have code & api's avilable which you can use to build up on this system to enhance the system. This all stuff has nothing to do with your PC, you can shift to anywhere in the world and still have your desktop with all your files and programs; which are located on one the most safe & backed up servers of the world. And, you don't have to pay penny for it, Thanks to google's unique-Revenue from Advertisments & Ancillary service philosophy.

But, as they say, Devil lies in the detail; all the services & produts are in offer, free of cost but for Privacy. Google weilds the power-Who is doing what and where ? It knows you online history. It knows everthing about you and you are nothing but a simple node in the matrix. Today the syatem is flexible, we can afford to ignore it but how long ?

In the nutshell, Google is heading for something big with this ambitious project (Or are we just imagining things). But as this network solidifies and becomes a utility like Telephone and Electicity, the world will be force to rethink about this in GOOGOL terms .