Even at Google broke is still broke

But let's face it. Poor is still poor. Broke is still broke. Down is still down.

You drop a bunch of stuff (some of it promising) and you're not advancing. An orderly retreat is still a retreat.

Google's market cap is now south of $95 billion. It has fallen behind that of IBM in the last year, and is approaching just half that of Microsoft.

Everyone with an ad-driven business model is getting hammered, and why not? Car companies, drug companies, retailers, real estate -- anyone who might buy ads is drowning.

So if you're looking to build a business model, you want to find one people will pay for. And looking to build a business model is what you really need to be doing right now.

Now is the time when, they say, smart companies position themselves for the next growth spurt. This is as true for people as it is for companies.

Here is where commitment to open source becomes good news.

It's not Google's commitment that we need to look at but our own. A crash under the proprietary model would have left us all orphans. (Both orphans parentless and orphans frequently.) Under the open source model, not so much.

There is an awful lot of code, some still sponsored, other bits newly orphaned, that can be used to build new business models if you can get your imagination in gear.

If you can code at all, now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of a project. You may not have much in the way of resources, but if you have a laptop and a roof you have sufficient onto the day.

The story here isn't what Google's dropping, but what Google is leaving for the rest of us. Opportunity and the code with which to pursue it.