A lot has been written about Facebook getting thousands of developers to build applications inside the Facebook wall using FML and other proprietary languages.  The excitement is in part due to the idea that much of the value created will somehow accrue to Facebook because they are now the platform (even though it’s unclear Facebook has figured out really slick ways to monetize all that action, but they probably will).  I agree it’s very cool.  Like Second Life has been doing for 5 years and Microsoft did so well 20+ years ago.  But as I was thinking about building a branded destination site today, it occured to me that because 65%+ of all Internet visits start with them, Google is the real platform and we are all building applications on top of their platform, the Internet, using their languages HTML, XML, etc.  Just as people go to facebook.com to get to FB apps, people go to google.com to get to ALL the apps.  And with Ad Words, Google has actually figured out a slick way to make money off it already.  And they make us bid against each other!  A pretty slick way to monetize us app builders on their platform.