Who rules the 21st Century? Apple, that's who
When traffic is so heavy to Techcrunch's live blogging of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference that it's virtually impossible to get through to see a minute-by-minute update of Steve Jobs' keynote, you know that the ground has shifted. Ten years ago, no one cared to cover product releases from Apple.
Then, as MacWorld notes, the iMac hit, and Apple's fortunes turned.
Today, Apple is one of the world's leading brands [PDF] and the furor surrounding the release of its 3G iPhone at fever pitch. Developers have been climbing all over the iPhone, even as Apple's Mac market share rises to new heights.
The only thing more exciting than Apple on its own just might be a Google and Apple tie-up, either through merger or through a much closer partnership. Apple builds the world's greatest consumer hardware and desktop software, and is poised to be the defining technology vendor of the 21st Century. Google builds the world's best web software. Together, they'd be an indomitable force. Microsoft wouldn't stand a chance.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
