It depends a lot on what the dominant technologies are in 50 years.<p>It's non-trivial to become a big search engine like Google.  It's non-trivial to develop an image-editing program like PhotoShop.  It's non-trivial to build a language runtime and ecosystem like Java, or to set up a content network like Yahoo, or to make scalable databases that run on all sorts of platforms like Oracle.<p>Right now, there're lots of new markets being formed, which opens up room for lots of new startups.  But will those markets get consolidated into features of big tech companies?  Or will they continue to nurture small independent players?