ReadWriteWeb

Presuming you've seen the news that Microsoft has moved to buy Yahoo! for $44 billion, the next logical question to ask concerns what this means for users and lovers of technology.

If its business analysis you're looking for, go read Paul Kedrosky. Here at ReadWriteWeb we focus more on the cultural impact of innovation in technology. On that front, I think this acquisition could be very good news.

Tagging content online is something that doesn't seem to have taken off the way some people expected it to.

Is it too complicated for widespread adoption? Is it too arbitrary to have the impact that formal taxonomies offer? Is it just too much work while you're zipping around the web? Who knows - what's important is that tagging web pages can still be very useful!

I stopped using social bookmarking tools for a big part of 2007 because saving things for my own future reference wasn't enough motivation to invest the time required. In the latter half of the year, though, I've seen what some other people are doing to make it worthwhile again. Here's five and a half ways you can fall in love with tagging URLs again.

What Web applications and trends will make it big in 2008? In this post the RWW authors ruminate on the current trends in Web technology and look forward to what 2008 might bring us. Topics include Google, semantic web, online advertising, recommendation systems, Facebook, digg, open standards, Mobile Web, search engines, and much more!

So check out our predictions for '08 and please contribute your own in the comments. Also you may want to review our track record for 2007 Web predictions.

Earlier this week we announced our Best BigCo of 2007 as Facebook and our Best LittleCo of 2007 as Twitter. In this post we'll give you our pick for Most Promising for Web in 2008.

Originally we planned to pick the most promising Web company for 2008. But in the end the ReadWriteWeb team decided to follow the example set by Time magazine last year, when it named "You" as its 'Person of the Year'.

Earlier this week we announced our Best BigCo of 2007, Facebook. In this post we're announcing our pick for Best LittleCo. We're also asking for your nominations for Most Promising Web Company for 2008.

These picks are something we do every year, this being the 4th year. Last year's Best LittleCo was YouTube, with Sharpcast selected as Most Promising. In 2005 37Signals was Best LittleCo and Memeorandum (now Techmeme) and Digg were joint Most Promising. In 2004 Ludicorp, creators of Flickr, was Best LittleCo and Feedburner was named Most Promising.

Every year in December Read/WriteWeb does a Best Web Companies round-up. This is the 4th time and, like last year, we're splitting it over two posts. In this post we'll announce the Best Web BigCo of 2007 and later in the week we'll announce Best Web LittleCo and Most Promising Web Company or Innovator. These will be selected by the Read/WriteWeb writers, but at the end of this post we'll be asking for your input for the LittleCo awards.

Last year's Best BigCo was Google, an honor it also won in 2004. In between, in 2005, Yahoo was adjudged Best Bigco. So can Google win the title for a third year - and become the Internet equivalent of the Chicago Bulls in the 1990's? Or will one of Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Facebook or another BigCo take the silverware (metaphorically speaking)? Read on to find out...

And the Winner is...

The Read/WriteWeb authors were unanimous in our decision, but it was a close contest between two BigCos. You can probably guess that one was Google, because it's been another bumper year of innovation and acquisitions at the Googleplex. All through the year we've been delivering the Weekly Wrapup of Web tech news, reviews and analysis - and seemingly every week there was something new about Google. But there was another company that really came of age this year; and more importantly it was the catalyst for some important Web trends. Last year this Silicon Valley based company was not among our BigCo list - it was shortlisted for Best LittleCo! In 2007 that all changed though. And by the end of the year, it had done enough to even trump Google as a big influential Internet company. The winner is: