Will Google, Facebook and Apple Own the Web?

Time looks at Google (GOOG), Facebook and Apple (AAPL) as likely winners of the Web wars. They do make think of the 3 Cs:

• Google = commerce
• Facebook = community
• Apple = content.

Interesting that none of the three create any of the underlying C, they just enable it. That being said, I don’t buy any of these “the future of this” or “how this will kill that” pieces, nor do I buy many of these “X company is the future of so-and-so”.

Google’s place in business is cemented: It’s catapulted itself to IBM (IBM) and Microsoft (MSFT) status and while it may or may or not change, it won’t go anywhere.

Apple today is kicking ass and won’t be disappearing, but just a decade ago it was going nowhere.

Facebook is a great story but has yet to prove itself. It can become Friendster, quickly, and last time I checked, MySpace remains much bigger…

But the bigger reason why I take these articles with a grain of salt is two-fold:

• Didn’t an analyst from Sanford Bernstein argue just last week that - on the strength of their respective 20-30% revenue growth - Amazon and Google would own the future of the Web?
• Isn’t the future of the Web a video-based one? Sure, Google has video mojo thanks to its YouTube acquisition. But Facebook? Not really. Apple can’t really claim leadership either.

This makes me wonder: If video is the future of the Web, who will win between the technology players versus the content players? Hmm… let me think about that, a post is coming soon.