• Information Week , Thursday, May 10, 2007 10:15 AM

Forget Google--News Corporation's MySpace is Microsoft's biggest threat, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin said at the Software 2007 Conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Wednesday. DoubleClick acquisition notwithstanding, Google doesn't have as much data, he said. In fact, the search giant's push toward personalization is all about acquiring more, but MySpace and other social networks already have the leverage.

Levchin believes that social networks are becoming more like operating systems in the sense that they serve users precisely through the control of their data. Because of this, he said, social networks will dominate in the years to come--just as Microsoft dominated the eighties and nineties through software.

It's all about user lock-in. Whereas Google collects information about what users search for, its ultimate purpose is to get people off Google.com as soon as possible. Social networks are all about keeping users in their network, while encouraging them to reveal as much information as possible--some of which could be used to sell advertising against.

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