Google to disrupt Web 2.0?

Newsweek covers the growth of the "new web". The article picks out MySpace, Flickr, Facebook, Craigslist and YouTube as key examples of sites that exemplify the empowerment of communities.

"The fact that our site is almost completely self-service and community-moderated allows our tiny staff of 19 to manage the seventh largest Web site in the world," says (Craigslist) CEO Jim Buckmaster.

YouTube, a year-old start-up whose 25 employees work in offices above a San Mateo, Calif., pizzeria, is competing toe to toe with giant media conglomerates by having its millions of users supply it with the 35,000 videos added to the site each day; visitors to the site view 30 million videos a day.

MySpace is preparing to pass Yahoo as the No. 1 site.

And then I spotted this fascinating quote from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google....

...(Eric) doesn't understand why people think his company wants to be the next Microsoft. "Everybody thinks we're building operating systems, PCs and browsers. They clearly don't get it," he says. So where does Google want to go? "Look at MySpace," he says cryptically. "Very interesting."

Fascinating because....

(1) There is a LOT of speculation that Google are into operating systems, PC's and browswers. I must admit I always thought they are more into attention, because if they can grab your attention they can serve up advertising.

(2) MySpace and the other social communities offer huge platforms through which to serve advertising but interestingly Google have let Yahoo get in first to acquire a number of the leading sites, with the obvious exception of MySpace which was picked up by Rupert Murdoch.

I keep waiting for Google to disrupt the social web arena and Eric's quote is the first evidence I've seen that they might be up to something. I wonder what Larry and Sergey have in mind.

Tags: Web 2.0, Google, disruption