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Folks, we've been watching the news (so you don't have to) for the first instance of a major player dropping the words "Web 3.0." It's like waiting for the President to flip the bird. And this week, Eric Schmidt did it, right in the Financial Times. The Google CEO quoth:

Ebay and Google both benefit from the adoption of Web 2.0, or Web 3.0.

Gag me with an hors d'oeuvre stick, he said the magic meaningless word. Has Schmidt finally attended one too many conferences, or is he knowingly crowdsurfing on the hands of silly neologists?

Grand alliances shaping Web 2.0 [Financial Times at MSNBC]