Note: predicted. Zappos did the same thing - they laid off people in advance because they expected things to get worse - and they even said that laying off the people cost them more money in severance that it saved in the first year.

Is this becoming a self fulfilling prophecy?

Are we predicting a downturn to the point that we are causing one?

I think the more likely explanation is that companies are using this "downturn" as an excuse to cut the crud without the bad publicity. The effect of this, more than likely, is that the downturn looks worse than it actually is.

And, with oil below $40, can it really be called much of a downturn?

1: there was no maximum length

2: the size of the player window was larger (was the encoded res larger too?)

3: and you could download the uploaded video in it's original form.

Youtube can't/doesn't do any of these things.

And google engineers here? Can you add those three things to youtube? Oh, and can I use my google login on youtube?

I've got a few projects on AppEngine and having a code base that has Jaiku's feature set will be a huge resource for building all kinds of apps.

Can anyone suggest a good alternative?

Edit: Unfortunately it looks like Evernote is less focused on text only notes, which make up a majority of my notes. The thumbnails are less useful than the first couple lines that Google Notebook shows. Plus, you have to explicitly click on the Edit button to change a note, which just seems like an extra step for no reason.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=435133

Anecdotally, companies seem to rot away after getting acquired by them.

Gogo talent acquisitions.

Google does have a pretty bad history with some acquisitions, but some have worked.