It looks like Google is forming their own little mercenary group of social web experts. After hiring Chris Messina, who has been an advocate for open web standards, and Joseph Smarr, the former Plaxo CTO, they've added a third big name to the team. Will Norris announced on Tuesday that he would be joining Google as part of a new social web team. Will Norris worked with Chris Messina on an open source project called DiSo, which was designed around creating open standards on the web.
It is unclear whether the group will work on enhancing the OpenSocial project, which has clearly stuttered over the past two years, or will perhaps work on something completely different.
While some companies take very precise actions, carefully researching products and the marketplace before releasing something new, Google has always been more of a sling it out there and see what sticks company. They've taken their stab at a Squidoo-like content portal with Google Knol, a social network with Orkut, and are currently working on a new form of collaborative email with Google Wave and centralized telecommunications with Google Voice.
So it will be definitely interesting to find out what this group might be working and whether or not it sticks to the wall.