I have lots of experience in programming languages and compilers. I can guarantee you there’s no such thing as “smart programming tools” capable of the magics you described. Won’t see one in the near future, if at all. There might be some tool doing perhaps certain things more efficiently, but that’s about it. Don’t count on it as if a big edge over others. Programming languages can only do so much the underline hardware allows them to, and that’s before including the theoretical computing limitation of programming languages themselves.

“Google–despite the dismal economic environment documented by the journalists at the financially challenged Wall Street Journal–has cash and can get more.”

I’m not sure of that either. The past decade people spent too much time doing nothing but consuming selves in a debt hole. Now they finally run out of credit and have to halt the spending spree, which causes the whole consumption-driven house-of-card economy to collapse. It’s a structurally damaged Titanic beyond new skipper Obama’s ability to salvage. 70% of this economy is consumption which is nuts and guarantees to fail. Tons of such consumption-based business will die, and how much ads revenue will go out along the way? And it won’t come back until the balance between consumption and production is restored, which might be many years away. I think it’s about the time to have a 2nd thought on the ads-driven model. Is it still able to support so many free services out there?