Peter Norvig of Google mentioned Linked Data in his interview with Reddit Ask Me Anything (thanks Gunnar)

So right from the start researchers are writing code that use our main APIs that
are using the data that everyone else uses. If you want some web pages you use
the full copy of the web. If you want some linked data you use the full link
graph.

Update: Richard Cyganiak correctly points out that Norvig said “link data” not “linked data”. :-) At least we won’t have to ask Google if they are using SPARQL and RDF now …