SAN FRANCISCO – “The New Economy? The crisis of these months has only one meaning: it is the end of the beginning”. Henry Blodget’s definition of Merrill Lynch is the center. He captures the mood of the Silicon Valley, far from defeatist despite the recession winds and the electric blackouts: here the creation of new companies (+622 only in December) exceed the failures by 50%. The jobs born directly from the Internet are three million in America, 600,000 more than last year. And out of ten online workers, seven are in traditional companies. The Net Economy is now everywhere – theorists the economist Robert Hall of Stanford – instead the frontiers and the culture of the Old Economy are fading away. But what will the second Internet revolution be like? Which technologies are going to impose themselves, which innovations will change our lives? Who will be the Bill Gates of this new wave? To explore the future of the New Economy, it is useful to start with the moves of its masters today, those digital empires that have long invested huge resources to explore new Internet frontiers. Starting with Bill Gates. While savoring a possible revenge against the antitrust (now that there is a friend of the monopolies in the White House like George Bush), the founder of Microsoft is experiencing its second cultural revolution. The first happened in 1995: so far Gates had snubbed the nascent World Wide Web, with an ideological turn he became the most ardent supporter, of course to launch his company to conquer the Internet. Today it is preparing an equally drastic break