Yahoo acquires del.icio.us. Yahoo acquires Flickr. AOL acquires Weblogs Inc. So is this what Web 2.0 is suppose to be all about – develop a Web 2.0 app/service/beta, generated some buzz, sign up some users, sellout early and get rich – no VCs required?

Ok I get it, Web 2.0 is the new Monster.com for the oligopoly Web 1.0 incumbents. The new spin is it has a guaranteed 6 to 7 figure signing bonus cooked in to the deal.

But seriously, if Web 2.0 is the next disruptive wave, how is it going to disrupt from inside the status quo?

Imagine if in 1995 that NBC had acquired Yahoo, Barns & Noble had acquired Amazon, Gannett had purchased Ebay and Comcast had acquired Excite that had already acquired Google. Would the web look anything like it does today? Web 1.0 was such a huge disruptive force because the incumbent status quo oligopolies missed it, the services developed as companies not status quo features, their was a completely open distribution platform, and VCs stepped to the plate to fund the revolution.

That’s clearly not what’s happening today. Today you don’t need a VC to put up $2 – 5M to start a company. Today you only need an idea, a developer or two, a URL, a hosting account, a blog and a social network. Ironically, because you’re not getting any VC participation and round dilution happening, when the $10 – $20M offer comes it’s game over because the founders still own all the equity in their ventures.

My point is you can’t build a disruptive technology revolution when the revolutionaries are being bought out before the 1st battle. Web 2.0 was suppose to be about open apps, open data, open attention, attention.trust, open conversation, users in control. Well that is never going to happen from inside the Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN data, service and content clouds.

So where do we go from here? Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington have defected to the British!

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