So who will be the next mega-giant of the technology world? Apple, Sony, and Google all share a large electronics or software base that could put them into major competition with Microsoft, so lets look at them each individually. Let's start with Apple. With the great success of the iPod, Apple has officially gone mainstream, so the future of Apple may look a whole lot brighter. However, with the amount of people who won't be comfortable changing and readjusting to the cleaner, slicker, easy-to-use system, there just won't be enough public backing. In fact the ease of use may just be their doom. How many Windows users who don't have iTunes have dragged and dropped other than into folders? Overall, I believe that Apple's computers are very well made, but I don't believe they are the new MS (Microsoft). Sony has had great success over their Play Station, but with the controversy surrounding the huge rootkit and DRM (digital rights management) audio CD's, Sony has lost their footing. Also it is important to note that another company had made the DRM software with a rootkit and Sony put it on their CD's for distribution. Sony does not make all it's own software, that is how they claim the rootkit was put on their audio CD's, so to compete with Microsoft, a primarily software company (other than the XBOX hardware), is unrealistic. This brings me to Google, you know the company that started with a simple search engine but has branched to shopping, Gmail, map service, and even video search as well as many other tools, such as Google Earth which even television channels use for weather forecasting. Coupled with the constantly rising stock price, Google is coming into the picture. People love Google so much that they are even making stories about a supposed Google PC, which if Google made would sell very well, even if they made just an OS. People can't get enough of the innovation of Linux, styling of Apple, and the functionality and availability (or mainstream factor) of Microsoft. So overall, Google makes great competition, and will give us all a change from Microsoft. Especially with Microsoft's "intentional WMF backdoor" as Steve Gibson from GRC calls it, there is a lot if speculation about the true integrity of the security of Windows which, truthfully, there should have been before.