I’m onsite this week at ad tech (the well-known technology meets interatcive marketing conference). Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners moderated a panel here entitled “Internet Economy: Start-ups, Bubbles and Buyouts.” Roger is known as one of the most versatile technology investors around and that made him a really good choice to manage this discussion.

The very last question from audience related to possible alternatives to Google. Roger provided some of his own take on the matter. He appeared very resolute that better techniques for organizing web content will surface to challenge Google. They way he looked at it, Google falls short when it comes to handling any type of user needs that don’t involve keywords (to paraphrase, “Google doesn’t work well when you give it a few words or a sentence”). His takeaway — editorial is a really important layer which explains the value of Wikipedia and other forms of aggregation that will emerge based on wiki and collaboration tools.

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Eric Schmidt headlined the Web 2.0 Expo today in San Francisco. He was queried in a punchy and intimate manner by the moderator, John Battelle, in an on-stage interview. John is no stranger to Google, of course. Though several books have been written about the company, John’s is the definitive work. Not your run of the mill corporate biography, John’s account is a more ambitious effort to bubble-up a level and put the company within an industry and societal perspective. He also follows the company via Searchblog http://battellemedia.com/ and is a mainstay of the Google ecosystem through editorial events like the Expo where he is often paired with the Google triumvirate.

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