Microsoft, Google, Startups Jostle for Attention at Web 2.0 Summit

Web 2.0 SummitCalm before the storm.

Now, a Word From Your Co-hostsTim O’Reilly and John Battelle take the stage Oct. 20 to kick off the sixth Web 2.0 Summit.

Comcast CEO Brian RobertsRoberts tells the crowd “Twitter has changed the culture of our company.”

DOJ’s Carl ShapiroDon’t ask him which way the Department of Justice is leaning on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Battelle did and got the brush off. Shapiro, who appeared to explain why the DOJ is crucial in governing business, said the DOJ is continuing to study it, but had nothing new to report.

PayPal President Scott ThompsonThompson announces PayPal will open up its Web payment platform to third-party developers to build payment applications Nov. 3.

Social Gaming is BigThe market opportunity for gaming on social networks, according to Zynga, which created Farmville, Mafia Wars and other notable and viral Facebook games.

Wowd CEO Mark DrummondWowd to public beta Oct. 20 at the show. Drummond said Wowd is a real-time search engine for discovering fresh, popular content from the Web. We haven’t seen that before! (wink, wink). Welcome Wowd to the Collecta, CrowdEye, Topsy club.

Twitter CEO Evan WilliamsEasily the biggest draw of the Web 2.0 Summit Oct. 20, Williams swatted away.

General Electric CEO Jeffrey ImmeltImmelt shows off the Vscan portable ultrasound gadget for journalists in a special media briefing after unveiling the device at the event.

Facebook COO Sheryl SandbergSandberg declines to say whether Facebook will build a payment processing system to sell applications, but confirms Bing will be indexing public Facebook status updates.

Whither Journalism?Executives from leading news organizations and Google discuss the state of journalism with event co-host John Battelle. From left to right are: Robert Thomson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal; Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau; Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google; and Martin Nisenholt, senior vice president of digital operations for The New York Times Company.

Mayer on Social SearchFresh off the journalism panel, Google’s Marissa Mayer returns to the stage to unveil Google Social Search, which lets users opt in to see search results influenced by friends from their social networks.

Google Social Search DemoMayer shows how people are connected in search results in this demo. Note the FriendFeed and Gmail designations after the contact names.

Intel CEO and President Paul OtelliniPaul Otellini, CEO of the world’s biggest chipmaker, says PC shipments are on the rise thanks to strong back-to-school shopping in 2009.

Google’s Sundar PichaiSundar Pichai, a vice president of product management at Google, discusses the progress Google is making with the Chrome Web browser and Chrome Operating System

Surprise VisitGoogle CEO Sergey Brin stopped by to say Hi, and talk about Microsoft Bing, the search engine gunning for Google’s 65 percent market share; the Microsoft-Yahoo deal; Chrome for Mac; Google Book Search; and the alleged Google Phone.

Father of the World Wide WebWeb 2.0 Summit ends where the Web began as Sir Tim Berners-Lee discusses his original vision for the Web, and fears that an entity will control it.