Google and YouTube Invited to World Economic Forum, but not Yahoo, AOL or Microsoft

Executives from Google, YouTube and MySpace will soon be rubbing elbows with media barons at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. But Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft aren’t on the guest list.

According to a list for a proposed media council at the WEF, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley and MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson will be rubbing elbows with the world’s elite media moguls. The three executives are on the short list for participating in the International Media Council, a new and elite sub-organization that will meet at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2007.

“It’s kind of like a list of who we think would be wonderful,” World Economic Forum spokeswoman Claudia Gonzalez told Google Watch buddy Mike Calderone at The NY Observer.

The list places Schmidt, Hurley (what, no Steve Chen?) and Anderson among a veritable who’s who of old school media barons, including New Yorker editor David Remnick and Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter. Also invited: Search guru Web 2.0 pundit John Battelle, new media critic Jeff Jarvis, Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson and OhMyNews founder Oh Yeon Ho.

Conspicuosly absent — or not, depending on your opinion of the companies — are any representatives from Yahoo, AOL or Microsoft. In fact, the list of over 100 names is dominated by newspaper, magazine and television news editors and personalities.

Also attending: Katie Couric. I think I saw her once. On YouTube.