I’m still attempting to grok what this means for the online (and offline!) ecosystem, but Facebook has acquired an interesting company named Parakey that was/is developing a web operating system.

The juiciest bit comes from the speculations that Google was also bidding for Parakey against Facebook…

Was Google a bidder for Parakey? One source says they were, but couldn?t compete with Facebooks pre-IPO stock. Facebook isn?t saying if this was a stock or cash deal, but it wouldn?t be dumb to assume that Facebook stock was at least part of the acquisition price.

Has Google been beat in the acquisition Silly Season of 2007 by a scrappy startup who itself has been rumored to be an acquisition target by the big three (the Goog, Microsoft and Yahoo)? Are we seeing the first cracks of the Antarctic ice that is Google in an evolving (and warming) ecosystem of competitive web players? Is this a moment where the underdog bests the giant on the battlefield? Lots of fun questions to ponder.

I’ll sleep on it and give some more thoughts in the morning. Meanwhile, check out TechMeme for more as this story is sure to blow up over there.

One last thought before I go… could this be the most significant web event to happen in the last decade? Depending on what happens in the next 3-5 months with this acquisition, I think so. Perhaps this doesn’t supplant Adwords or AdSense or RSS… but the idea of combining social networking with offline/online web experience with complete RSS/Feed suckage makes a compelling case for a historic web moment. Only time will tell.

More soon…

[Edit: Here's a fun post discussing the Facebook Juggernaut from Neomeme.]

FaceBook’s First Acquisition: Parakey