As the new year is approaching, I thought I would join in the trend of predictions for the upcoming year. Some are a bit of a long shot, some are pretty straight-forward – which is which is up to you (or very clear at the end of 2009). Feel free to comment on my/add your own predictions in the comments!

1. Chrome market share will not even reach 5%
   Some predict as much as 10%, but unless Google is able to do some magic to Chrome, they will not be successful. For me, it would require six different plug-ins to be available in Chrome – for others, many others are required. And I will be very amazed to see them replicate the Firefox eco-system within just one year.
   Additionally, when they do open up for plug-in development, it will be very painful for them to see the number of Chrome+AdBlock users – Chrome users will be mainly Firefox switchers and judging by the number of “Digg has ads?” comments on Digg, AdBlock is pretty popular. Even my mom uses it!
2. “Do no evil” will become a meme excuse
   As more and more people see Google as less of a do-good company, the company motto guideline is bound to become an internet joke, if that’s not already the case.
3. Yahoo will be split into several companies (and Jerry Yang will head up only the search division)
   This is not my area of expertise, but it must happen. They can’t be bought by Microsoft as one big company (some regulator will reject that deal, no doubt) so the best option must be to split and merge. How it happens will be the interesting part, though – will Jerry Yang actually split his “child” into several companies, will it be Carl Icahn forcing some kind of split or will it be a third option? I’m guessing Carl Icahn will do something, Microsoft will buy their ad business and Jerry Yang will stay in the search division (I will blame myself a year from now for making such specific guesses)…
4. Twitter will stop it’s growth
   I am on Twitter, but I really don’t believe in the service as such (although it appears to be the fastest growing “social” site right now). I use it as a way to keep my blog alive as I don’t have that much time to spend on blogging. And I don’t see it as a service that is relevant to anyone other than famous people (online) – the reason that Twitter is growing is not due to people using the service, not because people actually use it.
   Therefore, I predict that their growth will stop. But not only that! Another service will take over:
5. A “private” Twitter will emerge
   The perfect combination of Facebook and Twitter will become popular (D’oh! Facetwit.com is taken…). This probably already exists, but just isn’t popular yet. This is what I thought I’d use Twitter for when I joined – persuade my friends to join, follow each other and use it to announce personal things such as “…is at Café Cuckoos Nest tonight – feel free to drop by!”. But not many people want to broadcast this information – additionally, there’s already enough useless information on the web…
   And no, I’m guessing that Twitter will not introduce this service themselves…
6. Facebook will continue to grow worldwide, decrease in Denmark
   Being from Facebook country #1 (based on number of users compared to number of inhabitants), I’m going against the stream on this one too. At least for the people I know, your basic rule of thumb for adding users on Facebook is that you add people that you would say “Hi” to on the street if you met them. The problem is that you end up adding SO many people that you want to keep in touch with, but not share your pictures/status updates/etc.
   And the picture tagging feature… When “John added pictures of you” shows up in my Facebook RSS, I know there’s an 85% chance that I will have the urge to close my account once I see what has been added. Not because the pictures themselves are bad – I just don’t want to share most of these pictures which I haven’t seen since 7th grade, friends I don’t really see any more and (especially) my in-law’s… (which is also a big problem for Facebook – it’s not just for 16-30 any more)
   Lastly, if none of the above is enough reason, the applications surely are. No, I don’t want to know what Sex and the City character I am, I was not bitten by a werewolf and I do not want to be hugged by anything virtual… This may be fun for some people right now, but everyone will get tired of it eventually…
7. The internet will still be mainly ad-based, but more services will require micro-payments
   Finally (as I was asking for a while back) companies will start charging for their services. Free versions will still exist. See my next post on more about this topic.
8. The Android “for Netbooks” will be announced
   With the Google step into the OS market with Android, they have their first base version ready for further developing their own full-size OS. And to me it is very apparent that this is just another step further in Google’s wish of owning every part of the channel from your screen to their servers… This will also help them stay out of the micro payment business should they want to do that.
9. Apple announces TV with built-in iTunes
   Being relatively anti-Apple, this isn’t good news for me, because this will be a killer product. Really. A TV which looks great, has a very intuitive interface and a remote that you will want to have on your TV table and which lastly lets you rent/buy movies and TV shows. Wow. Get the Apple stock before this one is announced.
   (Bonus prediction: This will be announced in the last keynote from Steve Jobs who will do a “Bill Gates” style retirement)
10. I will release my own task management software
    Well… This prediction is sort of cheating, but I’m actually not sure if I’ll be done with it this year! I have started to build a very small GTD application for basic list management with a few extra cool features. But don’t worry – you’ll hear much more about this once I get closer to an alpha version.

Additionally, the financial crisis will of course be “interesting” from a technical point of view and also Sun and AMD will be on my watch list…

So, that was one long list of predictions that may or may not come true. Please do comment on them – I’d love to hear from you