Slashdot Mirror
Google To Challenge Facebook Again
Hugh Pickens writes "Google is set to make a fresh attempt to gain a foothold in the booming social networking business, seeking to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services. USA Today reports that the search giant is upgrading Gmail to add social-media tools similar to those found on Facebook, including photo and video sharing within the Gmail application, along with a new tool for status updates. According to reports, Google is planning to give Gmail users a way to aggregate the updates of their various contacts on the service, creating a stream of notifications that would echo the similar real-time streams from Facebook and Twitter. Google's decision to exploit the heavily-used Gmail service as the basis for its latest assault on the social networking business partly reflects the failure of Google's previous stand-alone efforts to enter the social networking sector. Its Orkut networking service, though launched before Facebook, has failed to gain a mass following in most parts of the world, despite success in Brazil, and its acquisition of Twitter rival Jaiku ended in failure after it scrapped development of the service." Update: 02/09 19:32 GMT by KD : It's been announced as Google Buzz; CNET has a detailed writeup.
Although it would take quite a few HCI PhDs to figure out how to do it all without cluttering an already cluttery gmail UI.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Neither company values privacy and just wants all the data for advertising so what difference does it make?
I think many people (though probably not enough) already worry about what Google and Facebook separately know and track about their online and private lives. Putting them both together under the control of just one of those companies? No thanks. A million times no.
Where Google can offer clear cut advantage, it's easy to see them dominating. Online search was ripe for such a revolution. Other things like answers.google.com just didn't make 'em enough money. Social networking needed a revolution and Facebook emerged as the winner. Friendster couldn't do it and MySpace became irrelevent through obsolescence. What I think had made Google such a success has been it's openness towards developers and Facebook beat Google to that game by allowing developers to use it's services (which is torn from Google's own playbook). Google can try but I think they're gonna fail on this one, Facebook people are way too entrenched in it now. I, for one, will avoid Google simple because I just don't like how big they've become.
Google will fail to get a foothold for one reason laziness, the masses will not want to change over their account to something else. There is little innovation to be had in social media and the little tweaks that facebook does not copy from google will not be enough for people to deal with the hassle of changing.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Google should first target those groups on Facebook that think any day now Facebook is going to start "charging" a monthly fee to use the service.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26810775786
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=445591600322
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=292810587737
I really do not want a constant flow of inane jibberings from every person in my gmail contact list day after day. This would drive me totally mad. Presumably there will be an opt out?
... seeking to counter the growing threat that Facebook poses to some of its core services.
What?
From the expert quoted in that article:
"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space."
Yeah, in the same way that McDonalds could be a major disruptor to grocery stores. Rampant, ridiculous speculation and little more. Remember when MySpace was supposed to be the greatest news source EVER? And tried to become a gaming platform? Unless I've missed some new development with Twitter and Facebook (I'm only a user of the latter), this is preposterous.
... because that's exactly the kind of thing I do with Google Reader. And it allows me to dump very little time into searching for news and maximize my time spent reading the news.
The only thing you'd see with Twitter or Facebook adding news is social networking bloat. That's it. One guy trying to do everything and be your one stop shop. It rarely works. Even some of Google's efforts to be your one stop shop die on the fine and fails encompass more of what you need from the web.
Not to toot my own horn or pat myself on the back too hard but the only reason I'm even in the standings on Slashdot submissions is Google and Google News. Let me know when Facebook or Twitter offer a simple RSS interface that I can log into from anywhere and share stories with my contacts. Also, they'll need to be able to search the news, turn that search into an RSS feed and let me view that with the feed reader
My work here is dung.
I will not use this until I can play Farmville on it and send people were-pigs and pork-knights so they can defend themselves properly.
Dear Google,
Your requirement of obtaining cell phone numbers for new YouTube accounts sucks.
What's next, a drop of blod or a small amount of our hair into a special internetID
device and/or staring into a webcam with proprietary software extracting info about
your eyes and/or face to verify we say who we are?
Screw the path being prepared for us in the future.
Oh, you did hear about Microsoft's call for a future internet ID, right?
When will the people get it, we need to look to each other for support, not
corporations. In the end, none of them have our best interests at heart. We
are nothing but products to be groomed and squeezed.
Ok, this has to stop.
Google needs to find one niche for the age 13-20 crowd, and exploit it.
Facebook will fall as fast as MySpace did.
Personally, I think that niche is security. Facebook has already failed miserably on that front, and, although I hate thinking about everything that Google knows about me, they (somehow) have a reputation of protecting that information.
Don't know how that got screwed up ...
Google just doesn't get all these social things, they're good at creating ruthless search bots, but lose when it comes to social interaction.
They'd better let this generation social networks be and focus on next generation social networks (mobile social networks). At least now they have an Android platform, so they may integrate social network functionality into their OS (maybe even based on current Gmail application) and start from there.
Innovation and producing the "Next Big Thing" is the more difficult but potentially more rewarding path.
Slapping lipstick on your competitor's pig is the easy shortcut.
Does it really matter whom you upload your private data to? Once it is out of your hands, it does not matter if it is with google, facebook, yahoo or msn
I think the social thing is more about being (or seeming) cool than anything else. The target of Facebook is people wanting to have an audience for wathever idea they can have to appear cool (and waste some time gaming).
So, what Google really needs to attract those people is becoming cooler, while remaining a good tool for productive people. The target is difficult to reach, but I would advise starting with games, there is potential for creating community there that is badly exploited on the Facebook side.
"Goofing off? Of course not boss, I was just checking my email!"
NO!
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!
Did I mention, NO?
I am already annoyed, pissed off, angry and fed up with having to use lame gmail and other core Google services on my Android device. I have PRIVATE business contacts in there. I have NO PERSONAL CONTACTS.
I do not want them seeing each other, seeing when I am online, what I am doing, where I am, or anything of the sort! I use corporate email, not silly gmail for emailing my clients, both from my phone and from my desktop. The *only* reason I use gmail is for the calendar and contacts that I am *FORCED* to keep there.
If Google makes me, or my company the least bit *more* uncomfortable with this situation, we'll be moving to Blackberries.
BAH!
Google has gone so far downhill, I've actually tried Bing!. I *HATE* Microsoft. I _LOATH_ them. Google is just getting so bad, however, I had to try!
Heck, it's almost impossible to search for what you want on Google now, as it constantly changes your search terms. You pretty much have to add a + in front of every search keyword, in order to get what you want. Shouldn't that be opt-out? You know, an "actually search for things I asked for, not things you suggest" option?
Now they have those idiotic search suggestions, while you are typing. Annoying, and slow. About 1% of the time I search for something (I'm in IT, I search hundreds of times per day), the Google redirect domain they use is slow, and you have to reload to get where you want to go. Now they have personalized searches, which of course just makes things worse.. so now I have to randomize all Google cookies using a Firefox app.
What is wrong with these people?
Most corporations block webmail(security, trojans, viruses, etc) but many are now allowing access to social network sites. Most folks visit social networking sites during the workday. So a webmail social networking app is a non-starter.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Now it'll block Google. Guess I'll be forced to use Bing!
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Google needs to apply some perspective-correcting algorithms to all the Fat Girl Angle Shot profile pics. There'd be a service to humanity!
nooooooooo
If Google pimps up GMail enough, with file-sharing, social networking, instant-messaging, and gee-whiz features, it will get blocked at our firewall as a security risk.
Right now, Google Chat is blocked. Google Voice is blocked. YouTube is blocked. Google Docs is blocked.
Keep it up, Google, and I won't be able to use much Google at all at work.
Now, for those of you who have no responsibilities, feel free to flame on and explain why my corporate masters are shortsighted, maniacally obsessed with control, and oblivious to reality in their vain attempt to secure the corporate data, protect our customers' information, and be responsible to the shareholders. It starts out as funny, then becomes annoying, and finally settles into a tragic display of ignorance of the reality of large corporation security issues.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Or $50 million.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I for one welcome our Stanford PhD overlords.
Google is the new Microsoft. It goes wherever they see money. It is the 800 lb gorilla that not only has the money to undercut its competition, but the advantage of giving themselves a higher page rank in searches. They can make their product appear better by marketing the new product's integration with the rest of Google's services.
Soon it will be like the 80's when tech companies' strategy switched from long term goals to the short term "What would make us attractive to Google?" strategy. Did we not learn anything from living with these tactics from Microsoft?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Uh from the summary it's google becoming like facebook, that much should be obvious, and as such they will have access to both.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
Give me wave as a social network, and I will be happy. Technically, people can already do this, but ... a 'publish and let people follow if they wish' sort of approach is better than a defined list of recipients.
You don't actually need much more than that, to make something that'll be better than most of the competition.
Sometimes you feel someone did a list of what should not be done regarding privacy and named the implementation of all that rules Facebook. Twitter is a better example of what could be implementing Google.
And if they do in their usual way, will be a somewhat open protocol, a federated social network. Not sure if twitter have such protocol, but if so, the right move for google would be to use the same protocol, and interconnect both.
Individually, Google's projects are mostly very interesting. But they don't work together. I have to set pictures separately for Picasa Web Albums, and a google profile, for example. Some settings must be configured in each project, while others are common across all of them, but it's hard to know which is which, and indeed where to find out where to make changes.
Before trying to go for something as ambitious as rivalling Facebook, they should improve integration and consistency between their projects. Not saying that it is too ambitious - if anyone has the skills to do it, Google has.
Why do i think it is a fad? Because once the novelty wears off its just a glorified diary. Some people will stay on but most will do better things with their time. Just like Second Life its fun while its new but really not something people spend years doing.
Most people on facebook havent given a seconds thought about just why it can be bad to put your photos, innermost thoughts, friends and secrets online. They will discover in time how hard it is to erase something already online. Im just waiting for the newspapers plastering every edition with horror stories about Facebook.
HTTP/1.1 400
I'll take my gmail the way it already is thank you very much.
I use gmail for 1 reason... ok maybe 2... but only one that really matters... It is fast and lean. If you fatten it up with useless networking crap its going to get slower, no doubt about it.. my second reason is that I had my name as an email address..
I thought the new APIs were 'gearing' towards wave? It was heir-apparent to GMail right?
I got my wave account, did a couple waves, realized the coolest plugins were missing... and decided to wait. I looked at the APIs.. It's pretty cool as a platform. It has some really interesting concepts. The fact that they were releasing the source to it and allowing the enterprise to have their own (supported?) wave server which could federate to others was AMAZING! I told all my friends it was the Exchange killer... Teach me to drink the kool-aid.
Oh well... Maybe they will let the enterprise download their own GMail server appliance and get around the privacy/security issues.
Lively? Yeah that worked out well.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Facebook has outraged thousands of obsessive shirkplace F5-pressers by changing its layout from the layout it changed to after the layout before that.
The change has met a storm of protest from users going so far as to click "Join This Group," with nearly two million people with, apparently, nothing whatsoever to do that they're actually being paid to stepping forward to demand that Facebook switch back to the layout before the last one, or the one before that.
"This new format makes absolutely no sense at all," said aggrieved office administrator Brenda Busybody, 43 (IQ), who had said the same thing each of the last three times it changed. "There's, like, all this stuff all over the place. It's not like the old one at all ... ooh, that's interesting, I hadn't seen that before."
The users vowed to continue their campaign assiduously for at least a day or two, in between working on their imaginary farm or joining "I Bet I Can Find A Million People Who Believe In Facebook Petitions Before June" or observably not giving two hoots about handing their personal details, fingerprints, DNA and probably first-born to Facebook's advertisers if it meant they could get thirty coins on Petville.
Facebook engineer Jing Chen explained on the company blog how the changes had been extensively tested on the 599.5 million Facebook users who hadn't joined such groups, and that he hoped everyone who wasn't a whiny little bitch would appreciate the new experience. "There's really nothing quite like the complaints of someone getting something for free that what they're getting for free just isn't perfect enough. It's what makes Monday Monday."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
This is going to go down as one of Google's biggest missteps, which these ginormous tech corporations always make when their egos get the best of them. People are not going to leave Facebook en masse and start using Google's social media for one basic reason: Facebook has the critical mass. Everybody is using Facebook. Anybody using Facebook instinctively understands this, as they connect with old classmates, friends and relatives. Facebook has become the virtual equivalent of our daily face-to-face lives. Facebook is the best pplace to find out about events that your friends are attending. It offers easy-to-use chat (when it isn't buggy) and email. I recently switched to a Gmail account, which I like, but I still use Facebook for most of my social messaging with friends and family.
Google's service would have to offer some killer app over Facebook to overcome this critical mass factor. Many of us left Myspace for Facebook, because Facebook was easier to use and didn't have all the crap that Myspace had, including all of the horrible page design customization.
Many people will argue that people are motivated to leave Facebook because of Facebook's privacy issues. I have several friends who are paranoid and upset about FB's privacy mess, but face it, most people just don't care that much about tweaking their privacy settings. That's why *social* media has exploded in popularity, because most people want to share things publicly and have open social lives. Facebook's privacy settings are adequate for the majority of FB users. Those folks who are concerned with privacy and security are going to be equally skeptical of Google, which everybody knows is primarily a data-mining business.
There is a strong first-mover advantage here because social networks are natural monopolies; For members of social networks the best choice of social network is the biggest social network because more of your friends are likely to be there. People acting on that basis grow the largest networks larger. The first network to have one member wins and no other social networks exist. In fact that is not the actual outcome because other factors play rolls, nonetheless first-mover advantage may play a dominant roll, if not complete roll, in determining the outcome of the social networking site battle between Google and Facebook.
Ebay is a good example. As a buyer, the best choice of markets is the market with the most sellers because competition among sellers lowers prices paid by buyers. As a seller, the best choice of markets is the one with the most buyers because competition among buyers raises prices paid to sellers. New buyers and new sellers choose ebay for those reasons and continue to grow ebay. Ebay would have to suck really bad for the suckiness to outweigh the advantage of their monoply
Natural monopolies are not necessarily business monopolies. The telephone system was a social network, a natural monopoly and a business monopoly. After the Bell breakup the phone system remained as a social network and continued its dominance as a method of communication but not as a business monopoly. Business monopolies built on natural monopolies dissolve when networks migrate to open standards and commoditize services. When that happens small companies compete on an equal basis with large companies because customers of both enjoy exactly the same network advantages.
Google is probably going to to lose the social networking site war because it does not have first-mover advantage. What works to overthrow a competitor built on a natural monopoly?
- Creating a meta network, a network of networks. In the world of websites, the meta network is the search engine. So Google already knows this trick. But it won't work here because Facebook locks out arbitrary access.
- Open standards for information exchange between social networking sites. Facebook will never voluntarily accept that because it gives away their advantage.
- Massive price undercutting. What craigslist is to eBay. Won't work because Facebook is already free.
- Massively improved performance. What the telephone was to the telegraph. Possible.
- Infiltration. Defy the the monopolist and bridge the closed network of your competitor to a network built on open standards. What the internet was to Compuserve. Possible. If Google develops an open protocol for exchange between social networking sites and then builds bridging tools which customers use to transfer their own information out of facebook to the outside, built into what Google partly controls, the smartphone, the browser and search.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Yeah, in the same way that McDonalds could be a major disruptor to grocery stores
Think of how the supermarket has changed since the emergence of the fast food franchises.
The emergence of the no-name brand bulk warehouse.
Think about how much space the mega mart allots to microwave and other prepared foods.
The meal in five minutes. Fast food sales in store.
At the opposite extreme you're likely to find foods that were rarely stocked outside of a gourmet specialty house.
I'm getting tired of Google adding "features" to services that I'm already perfectly happy with, and then not allowing me to have the same old functionality that worked perfectly well.
I've never used GMail Chat, haven't logged onto Facebook in 3+ years, and I already have to use Greasemonkey scripts to hide the useless crap on my iGoogle page (sidebar, etc).
First they break my GMail widget in iGoogle (can't open new e-mails in a new tab in GMail with 1 click anymore), now they're cluttering up my GMail even more, when all I want is a nice, simple e-mail client. I've been using this GMail address for years and years (I got my invite back when you actually had to TRY to find someone to invite you, when I signed up they gave me *one* invite... a while later that increased to 100), and I really don't want to switch.
The attractiveness of GMail is both the lack of banner ads and sidebars trying to lure me over into other services (see: Hotmail) and its *excellent* spam filter. If both of those are gone, see ya Google...
Your Google profile (the one that already exists) is only fully visible to people who are logged into their google account and are in the contact group you assigned as having full access. Probably good enough for most.
At this point though, the press release looks a lot more like integration of existing properties...
Contact list upgrades that link Picasa data, and "status updates" (perhaps including photo updates and whatnot). Maybe they'll add personal Google Groups (basically Facebook's wall).
Which if you really get down to it... is Facebook with and Adwords instead of app spam (which I would prefer any day).
Personally, I think that Google's properties are far away better than most, but they have never integrated on any useful level. Hopefully this will change that.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
I like having my Facebook and Gmail as separate entities. I email close friends and business contacts; I facebook casual acquaintences and people I'm on teams/groups with.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon etc. Whats with the hollow rhetoric? Doesn't matter who is top dog they will use whatever info they have of your search, email, buying habits or friend habits. Its all about making money, do you think that any of these companies are benevolent enough to put you before profit. Take your blinders off.
I don't use gmail (not counting work mail, I get about 2-3 emails a day, on a busy day), so its wonderful dealing-with-lots-of-mail features don't help me, but I do make use of its contacts manager. But I wish it were better, and more standalone from gmail. The main reason is that we've got a few different places that need to access contact info: our phones (G1s), our mail clients (IMAP via Thunderbird, sometimes webmail), various private web apps that I've written. I *hate* having to manage and manually synchronize contact info; I want a single master database of contact info that has everything we know about everyone we know, and have all our devices/programs access it directly.
Google Contacts allows this (it's even got an API, yay), but it still could be better. My main issue is that I don't see any (easy) way for me and my wife to share a contact list. We have separate Google accounts, and so separate contacts lists. We can obviously export/import to each other, but that's a pain. I really wish there was a way for us to designate a central set of shared contacts that we can use and tag individually. (I also wish that every piece of data we entered had a timestamp, so that we could see how long ago it was that we added Soandso's phone number, etc.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I can see it now...
"Checking my mail while sipping some nice tea... BUY authentic Indian TEA for only $4 a box! Click HERE"
Another me-too product that Google is not designed or staffed to make and which will lower the value of their brand.
It's like they're starting a nightclub.
Its Orkut networking service, though launched before Facebook, has failed to gain a mass following in most parts of the world, despite success in Brazil
No, it's because of its success in Brazil. I was using Orkut before the Brazilians discovered it. Then I started to get deluged with spam in Brazilian Portuguese. Then I stopped using Orkut.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hmmm....it works on iphone, and Android 2.0+....yeah.....so, in order to even look at this via mobile, I have to either us Gay AT&T, or get a Droid or Nexus One. No thanks....Facebook works fine on my Hero...
When will people learn that companies are amoral? Sometimes they'll take actions that seem "right" or "wrong", but their goal is always increasing value.
The real problem is that so many people seem to think that companies being amoral is acceptable and justifiable, and that they should be allowed to do whatever they wish in pursuit of the almighty dollar. This delusion has had tremendous cost for both our society and our world, and nothing has been gained but an increase in "shareholder value".
Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will learn that money cannot be eaten. -- Cree Indian prophecy
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
What's needed is an open source facebook. Farcebook was an innocent way to keep in touch with friends, but now that venture capital has gotten wind of 400 million facebookers, its falling all over itself to gorge on naive facebookers lax privacy settings and getting naive facebookers to invite new friends.. Watch the bald faced Facebook attempts to get you to attract more friends to Facebook, I can't just get to my list of existing friends until you see the invite friend page first. Then Facebook re-sorts your news feed so that you see news feeds from days ago, instead of the newest feeds.
https://www.safe-mail.net/ came up in a previous /. article about privacy. I've been using it and I like it, it's a very simple and elegant interface. Conspiracy theorists will complain about the servers being located in Israel, but I frankly find that preferable to all-powerful Google.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
This battle will come down to productivity. In the world of email, search and portable documents, Google has held the throne for more than a few years. In the world of making connections, Facebook has been the primary provider of highly productive online social networking. Facebook's ease of use, coupled with the stability of having your searchable username be the same as your real name, have turned it into the premier site for your general personal social networking needs. Google's success in search, Gmail, Docs and news has been a result of the productivity and efficiency of these services. It only took 2 seconds for any user to realize that Google Docs was a good way for them to collaboratively work on text and spreadsheets, because it was highly usable, and conveniently available for anyone who held a free Gmail account. It would be easy for Facebook to develop an email platform based on their username. The question is whether that would prove useful for people. Personally, I think it would be unpopular and ineffective. It's easy enough to "Send a message" to your friends through the Facebook interface. As for Google, there is real potential for a social networking revolution based on search. Imagine if your online profile through Google automatically brought up top search results on what was going on with your former classmates? Or if your work history automatically linked your profile to your former coworkers? The result would be a much-more-accessible online social network, especially if Facebook networks became searchable. As many commenters have mentioned, one touchy area would be privacy. I'm particularly interested in the visibility of a user's profile. If Google search results become more attuned to individuals (by their real name) "à la Facebook", then any "private" personal data will be available to everyone. This will spark at real shift in mentality among the users of social networks. Erasing or "desocializing" one's Web 2.0 identity, either through making requests to Google or/and going site-by-site to eliminate private info, will become as common as running spam blockers. Searchable Google identities will wake people up to the reality of "online privacy". But "Google IDs" would certainly be a hit, because it would make us more productive in our day-to-day life. Need a job? Google's webcrawlers can help you find one. Want to find your buddy from that summer camp way-back-when? Someone probably updated a group photo and tagged everybody (and though your old buddy doesn't have Gmail, he leaves a cybertrail that's easy to follow). Want to know how many of your high school classmates hit the big-time? You would probably be able to search it in one query (although your dashboard will probably have already given you a clue).