Web 2.0.11562 beta

I live in south florida, where real estate valuations have tripled in the past 5 years. It’s a blessing only to those developers and investors who had the resources and foresight to buy properties and hold them. Relentless immigration from Latin America, retiring boomers from up north, and the weakening dollar have all contributed to the increasing relative scarcity of the fixed amount of land squeezed between the everglades and the Atlantic.

Domain names, the virtual equivalent of real property, have been performing even better than their real counterparts. The .com TLD is the beachfront property that will always command the premium valuations. The already infamous sex.com online property (analogous to NYC’s Times Square in the real property marketplace) was sold recently for $14 million. I’m sure it’s worth much more.

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This has got to be the time to celebrate Google. They have done so much right this past year or so, and despite making some poor decisions, they made some great ones this week. Pretty much everybody has read about them holding out when the DOJ paid them a visit to request their considerable search records. Not an option for small companies like mine. But when giants like Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL don’t put up any fight, you have to admire Google’s chutzpah.

Google started late in the IM game, but nevertheless it should be noted that they have chosen the federated solution, sticking to the awesome and open XMPP/Jabber standard.