America’s perception and trust of Silicon Valley companies is changing rapidly and for the worse.  How the Valley survives is up to debate.  They may end up being only hardware companies, selling generic computers and devices.  It’s clear to me that most of today’s popular “social media” web sites, services, search engines, *and* their advertisers, will be gone or vastly modified within the next ten years.

Already reeling from scandals involving “data mining” and privacy breaches, Silicon Valley companies slipped into the shark-infested waters of politics in a big way since the Lehman crisis.  Many of the most famous firms have excluded or demoted links from searches, deleted accounts, banned or censored content, removed or de-monetized ad revenue, or shorted web site statistics.

My opinion about this is heresy in Silicon Valley, where entire cities are contemplating changing their names to honor the founders of data-sucking infotainment empires.

My best advice is to stay diversified and alert, and not become overly dependent on any one computing product or service.

Steve