Always-On has an interview with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, and asks him about the Pyra Labs acquisition context:
We’re extremely interested in getting more information published on the Web in any kind. A relatively straightforward analysis says that a lot of the digital authoring empowerment in people’s hands is at a stage where people do not appreciate how powerful this is. I’m not just talking about computers. I’m talking about digital cameras and those types of things.
I believe that this notion of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are really about, is the next big wave of human communication. The last big wave was Web activity. Before that one it was e-mail. Instant messaging was an extension of e-mail, real-time e-mail.
The next step in general for information is the self-publishing part. If somebody takes the time to write something, having Google understand that is very important to that person. So if you view the world as one person at a time, getting that person, that author to understand that we value, we index, we search, and we care about their information is a very important part of our strategy.