[1]:http://pages.bangor.ac.uk/~mas010/gpdsdiag7.jpg


@Fernando: @Todd: I'd just like to add to Todd's remark on the classification of groupoids up to isomorphism. It was early realised that any groupoids is the disjoint union of its connected components; and that given any $cx \in Ob(G)$ for a connected groupoid $G$ ithen $G$ s isomorphic to $G(x) * T$ where $G(x)$ is the vertex, or object group, at $x$ and $T$ is a "tree groupoid", i.e. $T(y,z)$ is a singleton for all $y,z \in Ob(G)$. However this determination depends on first choosing the object $x$ and then for each $ y \ne x$ in $Ob(G)$, choosing an element in $G(x,y)$. So there are lots of choices. As Fernando remarks, a single connected groupoid is up to homotopy  "the same as" a group. 

However the relation of groupoids to other areas of mathematics is interesting. 

![diagram][1]

Now what the objects of a groupoid add to a group is a kind of "spatial" character.  This allows all sorts of new possible interactions beteeen different grouopids, quite unlike those of groups.  This is especially relevant to van Kampen type situations. Further, the choices involved in the above determination imply that the classification of **diagrams** of groupoids does not reduce to the classification of diagrams of groups. 

Further, morphisms of groupoids have much more variety than do those for groups: for groupoids we have equivalences, fibrations, covering morphisms (related to actions on sets), quotient morphisms (factor by a normal subgroupoid), universal morphisms (identify objects in some way), orbit morphisms, .... So it is often in the relations **between** groupoids rather than the classification  of single  groupoids that we should see the benefit of their use. This reflects the categorical viewpoint.