Web innovation is at least as unpredictable as anything else, perhaps more so. Still, some trends are shaping up already, a few of which have been percolating for a year or more. There will be technological advances, attitude shifts and various convergences of devices, Web sites, "personal tech" and "smart applications." The following themes and focuses - among many others, certainly - will be in the news in 2010.

The ever-present "now" - Facebook and Twitter, and their hordes of imitators, brought a bubble to the real-time trend in the latter part of 2009. The growing demand for instant everything, immediate interactivity and "nowness" reflects people's desire to make the most of every moment, and fast. Smartphones, netbooks and WiFi-enabled whatchamacallits will converge more and more until people won't trust restaurant ratings unless they're from diners still at the tables. Real-time collaboration will get a boost, too, once Google can explain exactly what Wave is.

"We need to work toward a world in which access to networks and information brings people closer together and expands the definition of the global community." —Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

In a January 2010 address at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a major foreign policy address on Internet Freedom.

Secretary Clinton emphasized a commitment to defending the freedom of expression and the free flow of information in the 21st century. The free flow of information and ideas over digital technologies is in our national and global interests: it is important for economic growth; for U.S. diplomatic relationships; for building sustainable democratic societies; and for meeting global challenges in the years and decades ahead.

Cyber security researchers and analysts have uncovered the existence of a spy network based in China that was used to steal sensitive, classified government documents from India - as well data from the Dalai Lama's office and the United Nations.

The "Shadow Network", as this network is now known, has been traced to two people living in Chengdu, China.

China is largely believed to possess a Cyber Warfare Doctrine that is designed to achieve global "electronic dominance" by 2050. With a yearly budget of $55 million allotted for it and over 10,000 hackers working in tandem, China is second only to U.S. when it comes to cyber snooping prowess.

Most great tech companies start out with one great idea, and for Google it was figuring out how to make money off the work of others. Google doesn't publish any books or magazines or newspapers. It doesn't employ writers. Yet Google probably makes more money off the printed word than anyone else on the planet. (It might make more than everyone else combined.) Three years ago, Google set out to bring that freeloading business model to the world of video, when it spent $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube, which was then an 18-month-old video-sharing site that was losing money like crazy.