Cloud Dreamin'

Last week at DreamForce, Salesforce.com's annual orgy of self-congratulation, Google CEO Eric Schmidt took the possibility to explain why Google dropped $12.5 billion for Motorola: The Internet search giant wants to make... telephones.

The world's most famous Internet company uses the annual conference of the company that practically invented the Software-as-a-Service industry to announce that Google's then business move is manufacturing telephones.

In other words, as more and more people attempt to do things "in the cloud," the Then and there Big Thing is making appliances that connect to it. Like, for instance, telephones. Or e-readers.