AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

The social website started by a Harvard dropout is stealing the spotlight from Google. LA Times

PALO ALTO — – Google Inc. is used to being the center of attention, the giant that executives at other Internet companies wish Silicon Valley would shut up about already. For the moment, they’ve got their wish. People here can’t stop talking about Facebook Inc.

Commanding their attention: the social networking site’s rocketing growth, cheeky business strategies and staggering valuation.

Microsoft Corp. last month took a small stake in Facebook that valued the company at $15 billion. The deal may have positioned Facebook’s 23-year-old co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to one day supplant Google co-founder Sergey Brin as the technology industry’s youngest self-made billionaire.

Brin, whose company lost the bidding war to Microsoft, downplayed the defeat at a recent gathering for analysts, saying, “We don’t feel at a higher level that we need to own everything successful on the Internet.”

Maybe not. Google’s spectacular success has made it the seventh-most valuable company in the United States. Still, after years of all-Google-all-the-time, it’s Facebook’s turn in the spotlight.