In a blog entry yesterday, William Grosso stated:
When I look at the valley, I see a lot of innovation. But it’s surface innovation instead of deep innovation. To dramatically overstate the case: we’re focusing on building better event calendars and better blog aggregators. And on bringing the same functionality, slightly tailored, to all the nooks and crannies of the long tail.
I'm not sure that I totally agree with him, but I do agree that the valley needs to get their shit together before Microsoft come through and changes the rules of the game once again.
It's easy to forget about Microsoft while surrounded by a bunch of people banging away on their Powerbooks at a coffee shop in SF, but lest we forget, Microsoft will grab all of the innovations coming out of the valley, package them up, and deliver them to people who have no clue what a tag or a social bookmark is.
Embrace and extend is alive and well, my friends. Just imagine if IE 7 comes with a default setting to post bookmarks to "Live! Bookmarks" or some such service that they come up with. The entire social bookmarking field changes overnight. And Microsoft wins.
I sure hope that Yahoo and friends are taking all of the innovative people that they acquired and figuring out a way to mash their apps together in a way that even my mom can use. Because if they aren't then Microsoft surely will.