Google vs. Facebook: Battle for the Internet

As everyone knows Google has been used as more of a verb than a noun in user’s day-to-day language. Now-a-days, if someone wants to research something they say they will “Google it” instead of saying “I will use Google to find the answer.” Over the past year, especially with the launch of the movie “The Social Network,” Facebook has thrown its name into the ring of verb usage. If someone wants to find someone they went to school with it’s easy to “Facebook” them. Facebook, however, is becoming more of a threat than just competing with Google on being a popular grammatical part of speech, but on entering the search engine industry.

Likewise, with the new hire of Google’s CEO Larry Page, Google wants to throw their proverbial hat into the social media ring…once again. They have already started to take steps in that direction with the "+1" feature in the Google listings. This is a direct reflection of the Facebook "like" button, since Google claims the button means "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out". This addition allows each Google listing, which is where just under 50% of most websites traffic comes from with Facebook being the second most popular, to contain the "+1" feature without the user having to click through to the website. Even though this allows Google to compete for peoples interaction with their search engine and not Facebook, Google is still shorthanded on users with Facebook having 500+ million active users. Google has had a few attempts at social media integration in the past, many of which ended in short lived successes. CEO Larry Page has stated that the whole company (Google) must be behind the new social push, and therefore re-initiated a company bonus multiplier based on their success in the social movement. Although Google has the opportunity to succeed, some of the past social media acquisitions/creations failed to accomplish much or even catch traction.

Orkut – A Google built social media platform to compete with Friendster after Friendster denied Google’s bid to buy them. This has shown success in Brazil; however numbers have been falling everywhere else.

Dodgeball- A Social mobile local company, purchased by Google in 2005, that stayed within Google’s confines and never gained traction. Google killed the idea in 09’ to focus on the development of “Latitude.” Now, with the release of Foursquare by Dodgeball co-founder Dennis Crowly, this social media realm could be more difficult to break into.

Picasa – In 2004 Google purchased Picasa, an online photo editing software and developed Picasa Web Albums. With the competition of Facebook and the ability to instantly share photos with friends, users found no reason to store pictures elsewhere.

OpenSocial – With the ability to access all the data stored on other social networks, Google thought this could be the winning combination. Facebook failed to jump on board and was building their own competing platform. Without the largest social platform working with Google, the development started to falter shortly after.

Jaiku – Similar to Twitter, killed by Twitter. In 2009, Google stopped development and released the code into the open source kingdom.

Wave – Could have been useful for enterprise collaboration, however when pitched to consumers there was a wave of confusion. Google discontinued development process in 2010.

Buzz – With a Facebook-esque news feed and usability, Buzz had the potential to be a contender in the social market. After some FTC investigations, Google Buzz got stung by their lack of privacy transparency and will continue to be scrutinized for privacy practices.

Aardvark – Purchased in February 2010, this company allowed social question and answer type interaction for experts in a particular field. Since then Quora has replaced Aardvark in the search results and Google has abandoned the Aardvark platform.

With all that in mind, we cannot forget YouTube. This social media platform remains the second largest search/social platform out there. With successes like YouTube, Google cannot keep their hands out of the social realm. Moving forward Google has many options whether to restructure the DNA of their current/past social platform attempts or acquire a social platform and utilize current Google tools to increase the performance of the platform. Either way Google has its work cut out to catch Facebook in social media.

To flip the roles, Facebook has subtly started to expand their business sights into the future. Talks of Facebook browsers, search engines, cell phones and much more have been stirring about since Facebook has continued to gain revenue ($2 billion a year in adspace alone) and investment monies ($500 million from Goldman Sachs –reported). With all this “extra” cash, making a bold move on the behalf of Facebook would be a likely guess and their first target: Google.

With Facebook and Google doing battle for the internet, it is not known how or what will happen or who will win, but one thing is certain, with two powerhouses doing battle, it will be quite a show!