The Battle Between Google and Facebook 202
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Soulskill
from the friend-request-denied dept.
from the friend-request-denied dept.
A story at Wired delves into the ongoing struggle between Google and Facebook to establish their competing visions for the future of the internet. "For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms — rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this 'social graph' to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire — rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now." A related article at ReadWriteWeb suggests that while Facebook's member base is enormous, the company hasn't taken advantage of its influence as well as it should have, though the capability for it to do so still exists.
Why not have both? (Score:5, Insightful)
A step back perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the magic of Google is that it's not (as) personalized, and I can get information outside my group of friends/peers. Frankly, my friends are great, but I don't go to them for advice on, say, programming; I go to Google. What's more, I couldn't get a lot of the info I get from search engines from my friends, because they just don't know. Social networking is awesome, but using Facebook in place of Google sounds like many steps back, at least the way it's being presented here.
Re:Why not have both? (Score:5, Insightful)
My "vision" for the future of the Internet:
One where there is room for Zuckerberg version, Google's, Microsofts and Richard Stallmans. And anyone else who wants to put something up for consideration.
As long as we have network neutrality, all of these visionaries are free to do as they please.
This "one version will overtake all the rest" mentality is a meat-space concept and has no place on the Internet.
Facebook will begin to fade just like myspace did (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see facebook as anything else other than a fad that will begin to go away. I already deleted (not just disabled) my fb account and know many other people too after graduating college.
Google will always have an advantage for me (Score:5, Insightful)
I can get useful information without signing up for anything. Facebook needs me to join and create a profile.
I am not a joiner.
Well I for one (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well I for one (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Facebook will begin to fade just like myspace d (Score:4, Insightful)
Give Me Dispassionate Information Any Day (Score:5, Insightful)
Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not have both? (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. My friends may be good at recommending a pub that I would like. But I don't think my network of friends would be particularly trustworthy for recommending with digital SLR to buy.
This is CREEPY sounding. (Score:5, Insightful)
humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information
I'm sorry but honestly I like cold logic.. This sounds like some sort of RIAA / Government control the flow of information justification and creeps me the hell out.
I donno sort of like this...
"why do you need to look at books Timmy? Why not just ask grandpa about it? What do you have to hide from your dear old grandpa timmy?" Why don't you trust that we know best.
It just sounds creepy but maybe I just have less faith in my family's wisdom than most? Anyhow I really don't see a battle here... There is more than one way to skin a search request....
The Wired heuristic (Score:5, Insightful)
A good general heuristic: plans exposed on Wired never come to fruition. Wired is where you go when you want to gain exposure for a plan that can't get traction.
So no, Facebook isn't going to challenge Google with any success. If they're lucky, they'll continue to be an interesting niche player, like blogs. More likely, they'll let their success go to their heads and they'll become MySpace, which people abandon in droves for the next flashy thing.
In this case I also RTFA and I think their plan is dumb: I use google precisely to find out what I don't already know. But even without RTFA, the Wired heuristic tells me it's a bad idea. That heuristic has served me well.
Trusting strangers vs. cicrle jerking (Score:3, Insightful)
That's basically what you get when you define "opinions from everyone vs. opinions from friends" negatively.
On one hand, in google, the recommendations and answers you get are from strangers. They may be experts, they may be deluded and full of it, they may actively try to misinform you. You don't know. Now, Google holds the creed that the majority isn't out there to "get you" and to con you, so the numbers work in your favor. If, and only if, the majority actually has the right answer. If you asked some 500 years ago the majority about the revolution of sun and earth around each other, the answer you would have gotten had been a wrong one. When your source is the majority, new insight is rarely possible. The majority never thinks "outside of the box", it usually goes with what's tried and (perceived) true.
The other extreme is relying only on your network of friends and other people who think like you (because else, they would probably not be on your friends list) for information. The danger here is that wrong information will become reinforced and more readily believed as truth because it will be confirmed by many. A says X, B agrees, C doesn't know, but he perceives A and B as experts in this field, so he takes over their theory as reality.
Either has its advantages and drawbacks. The internet is no dinner where you get your answers and informations served. It's more a buffet where you have them offered, but you alone are responsible to get the right ones.
Bad crowd (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the problems with the internet is that it gives people a chance to self select themselves into a tiny little corner of interstes that creates an echo chamber. I don't want recomendations from people I know to be prone to confermation bias. I want recomendations from a large body of evidance showing both pro's and con's. Nothing against Facebook, its just their users I have an issue with.
It's the Economics! (Like the 60's) (Score:5, Insightful)
The big problem facing Facebook is difficulty of monetization. There are societal and cultural sensitivities around companies monetizing one's "circle of friends." This has been true since the early 90's with MCI's campaigns.
Cold mathematics (Google's way) doesn't have this problem.
I am reminded of a quote from the PBS documentary about the 60's. A woman was lamenting that so many of the movements had powerful societal traction, but no economic basis. So in the end, they faded away.
It's too much work. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the moment you start writing reviews of your doctor friends, Facebook explodes into a giant flamewar.
Re:Well I for one (Score:1, Insightful)
How do you discover new things through Facebook when it effectivly blanks out any information provided by anyone not in your "network"?
That is one of my major complaints about Facebook. How am I supposed to know if I want to be "friends" with someone if their profile is hidden from me? And I can't view their profile unless I am friends with them.
The whole thing seems like a dick waving exercise for people who have a lot of IRL acquaintances (not necessarily people they are actually friends with). Seemingly the only way to become "friends" with someone on Facebook is to know them already.
Re:Well I for one (Score:2, Insightful)
If you only base your decision on your friends recommendations, you would never look at anything 'new'.
Maybe it's just my friends, but I find the range of material I find out about from my friends far more diverse than I'd find out just by looking at mainstream adverts or shops. Music would be the classic example, but I think it applies more generally.
Consider, how much of Firefox's success (not to mention Linux, to a lesser degree) is due to people seeing it advertised or otherwise finding out about it themselves, versus it being recommended by a geek friend?
Re:Why not have both? (Score:3, Insightful)
facebook==AOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Not happening, get over yourself. It didn't work the first time, it won't work this time.
Re:Why not have both? (Score:5, Insightful)
And besides, Google is already making forays into just this sort of thing with Wave. Holy false dichotomy, batman.
Google's data is much better (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook cannot replace the internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this 'social graph' to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire - rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now."
Translation from Wired corporate shilling:
Facebook CEO envisions a walled garden controlled by Facebook, where your identity, network of friends, colleagues, peers and family belongs to FaceBook, and where Facebook is the primary source of all information, just as they've always dreamed of being. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query FaceBook to find anything, rather than using the far more useful and wide-ranging Google search, which might lead you to sites which are not hosted by Facebook. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where the real internet is now.
I've never liked sites like Facebook since they started off by trying to make everyone join their site before they can actually access content. Visit their front page, and all you see is an exhortation to give them your email address and some personal details - that tells you everything you need to know about their intentions and the utility of their site. Joining them means being data-mined by Facebook for every ounce of your worth as a consumer. Thankfully Facebook's vision of the future of the internet is about as relevant as Wired magazine is nowadays.
Re:Trusting strangers vs. cicrle jerking (Score:2, Insightful)
Google is good because it bypasses my friends' limitations of knowledge, Facebook is redundant because the only things my friend's could tell me I could simply ask in person.
Zuckerbergs 'vision' (Score:3, Insightful)
IM sorry, but its really hard to respect anything this guy says. IMHO, he got really lucky with Facebook, and he simply doesnt have that much intellectual capital.
Re:Why not have both? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I would consider Stallman an "inclusionary." He has fought hardest and loudest to ensure that users - who normally have no say whatsoever in how the software they use works, will have the choice to use "something else" if that's what they want. And the beauty of it is, you are free to choose to use Microsoft's offering instead.
It's kind of the same thing as net neutrality. It's all about having choices. And that scares some people who's world view won't allow them to see a market place of ideas in terms of anything but "winner takes it all."
I'm sorry you feel so oppressed by the bearded one, but don't worry. Last time I checked there was plenty of opportunity for you to stay inside the silo and continue to be locked in by vendors like Microsoft. I honestly don't think that's going to change any time soon.
I'm just glad that my choice isn't limited to you narrow vision.
There is no battle... (Score:3, Insightful)
The internet is so big that Google and Facebook are swinging their swords, but are nowhere near each other and cannot really hurt each other. There is room for both 'ways', among the many many other ways the internet will be used as well. There is still a big IRC following and surprisingly a lot of people still on Usenet. I think its silly to act like the Google meme or the Facebook meme is in any way an 'end all' solution or method for use of the internet.
Does nobody see a privacy issue? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:antimatter in the mix (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks but no thanks...
Re:Give Me Dispassionate Information Any Day (Score:5, Insightful)
Google weakness is their scope. When it comes to information, they are the GM of the 60's. In house, vertical, total control.
I don't understand this statement, I'm afraid. In what way is information gleaned from pages returned from Googling in-house, vertical, or totally controlled with respect to Google?
Social networks should not be flat but holistic.
Again, no clue here. Flat in what way? Holistic how? They should be looked at as a whole network rather than as individual people? I can dig that, but "flat" doesn't seem to be the contrary case. I'm also not certain what "good design of social networks" has to do with "getting information".
Facebook banks on that a groups people that exchange information that they find _useful_.
Alas, when information is passed primarily through the hands of the masses, what people seem to find useful is that pop-rocks and Coke are deadly, that newts mean water's good to drink, that accepting Jesus is the road to eternal life, and that B1gd1ck5432234 is sooooo drunk. Asking around on a social network is a terrific way to collect anecdotes, recommendations, and more mindless lolling than you can wince at, but is not a good basis for even the lightest and most trivial of research. No, give me a solid search engine paired with critical thinking any day.
Re:Don't forget Advertisers! (Score:3, Insightful)
Hulu actually already has this, in the browser. During an ad, if you mouse over the playing video, two icons will appear on the left hand side.
A thumbs up, and a thumbs down.
While they don't let you skip or tag, I think you get the idea. They could absolutely renovate and add more feedback options to end users, but this basic "I like it" vs. "I don't like it" has been around for quite a while.
Re:The opinion of "the masses" isn't personal (Score:3, Insightful)
I have somewhere north of 300 friends on Facebook.
Do you actually KNOW any of them?
Re:Facebook cannot replace the internet (Score:3, Insightful)
Visit their front page, and all you see is an exhortation to give them your email address and some personal details - that tells you everything you need to know about their intentions and the utility of their site. Joining them means being data-mined by Facebook for every ounce of your worth as a consumer.
Which is why I really don't know what is on facebook other than what I have heard through hearsay. Not worth the effort if I can't peek behind the kimono without baring myself.
Not gonna happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Where is the Wikipedia of social networking? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think he means just in terms of being organized by a mostly-benevolent non-profit organization, which collects some donations to run the servers and implement incremental software upgrades, and doesn't spend all its time trying to sell users' data to advertisers and otherwise "monetize" them.
I think we're fairly lucky that Wikipedia got to its particular niche first; for Wikipedia's many faults, if some corporation had gotten to the idea of "crowdsourced encyclopedia" first, and owned the results, I think the web would be a much worse place. In social networking, a large company did get there first, and I think the web is a worse place for it.
Re:antimatter in the mix (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft's world domination by operating system monopoly is over, they are a dead man walking.
Microsoft is seeing continued growth in earnings [microsoft.com], even in a down market, is about to release their strongest client OS offering yet, and is showing notable gains in server and entertainment markets. How exactly is the company a "dead man walking," except in a Linux or Apple fanboy's dream world? I'm not one to idolize Microsoft, but declaring them dead on no basis whatsoever - in a thread about Facebook and Google, no less - is really a bit over the top.
I suppose this is the year of Linux on the desktop, too? Wake me when you come back in contact with the real world. I won't be holding my breath ...
Re:It's the Economics! (Like the 60's) (Score:3, Insightful)