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.

privacy is key

[caffeinemessiah]

This might be interesting if they manage to get the privacy thing right. If they don't, I see it as a disaster. I use gmail to communicate with a much wider audience than Facebook. If somehow they managed to let me easily and effectively segment users into different groups, with STRONG WALLS between groups, then it might be interesting.

Although it would take quite a few HCI PhDs to figure out how to do it all without cluttering an already cluttery gmail UI.

Will there be any difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither company values privacy and just wants all the data for advertising so what difference does it make?

Your lives belong to us

[gsslay]

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.

Laziness

[jimbolauski]

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.

Google is succumbing to the Dark Side

[axl917]

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.

Who cares?

[whatajoke]

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

How cool will that be?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The law of unintended consequences...

[rickb928]

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.

Re:Laziness

[Tim C]

Laziness? Why would I move to another social networking site, if all my friends are still on Facebook?

Re:privacy is key

[mrboyd]

Relax, I don't know what's going on in your life for your first thing on your mind to be about cheating swinging gay porn and whatnot but most of us just want to avoid their close friends, vague relation and coworker to mix it up too much.

We all have pro-email and personal email but I'd bet that the majority of us had to give out the personal one away in a professional context for whatever reason (file size limit, exchange server bogged down, msn/google chat, etc..) and we really don't need our clients and recruiters to know about the boozing festival we had last week end for our childhood friend's birthday. It's not that we're ashamed of it. It just none of their business.

Re:privacy is key

[ztransform]

Wouldn't you really just need to have two accounts, your real life account and then your second one for all the naughty stuff you don't want people to find out about?

The person you're being naughty with has a friend who has a friend who is your real-life serious friend.

Facebook does not hide friends lists. So the circle can easily be followed.

Re:privacy is key

[gartogg]

And clearly the sample of stories that are told is representative of how thing go wrong in peoples lives.

The separate domains of my life shouldn't overlap. The stories are re-told because they are sensational, not because they are likely, or frequent, or representative of what people should worry about. The fact that you have things that you do not want others to know about isn't about hypocrisy, it is about privacy. Privacy allows for hypocrisy, but the fact that something is private, or even would be embarrassing, does not imply that it is wrong or hypocritical. Internal memos about client plans would be embarrassing if leaked, but there is no shame in having them. I don't want clients seeing my work life, I don't want anyone able to see what is going on with my love life (even though I am doing nothing I am in any way ashamed of,) and I don't want the wider world who I've emailed once seeing my private life at all.

Re:Facebook : 2010 :: CB Radio : 1975

[bberens]

I think you're crazy if you believe that the 13-20 crowd is even vaguely aware of the concept of online security. In my experience they view privacy and security as hurdles, not assets, for the products they use online.

Re:Laziness

[Mr_Silver]

Google will fail to get a foothold for one reason laziness, the masses will not want to change over their account to something else.

Not to mention inertia.

For example, I use Windows Live Messenger. Not because it's the best IM protocol (it certainly isn't) but because all my friends are on it.

Re:Facebook : 2010 :: CB Radio : 1975

[Jeian]

> Google needs to find one niche for the age 13-20 crowd

> Personally, I think that niche is security.

You must know different 13-20 year olds than I do.