Facebook vs Google

Facebook is traditionally known as a social network in which you can remain in contact with your friends by posting on their wall or messaging them.  It also has many applications within its site, including games and quizzes.  Google was traditionally used as search engine.  It was so popular that it the word for “searching” on the Internet was replaced by “google”.  Google was also known for its email, called Gmail.

Facebook has recently released plans that will make it the biggest competitor to Google.  This plan is a messaging service.  “Facebook's service is designed to combine traditional email, instant message and cellphone text messages into one system, routing messages to whichever service is best for each person, and keeping an archive of it all.

Internet users used to spend only half as much time on Facebook than they did on Google, but now those statistics have changed.  People are equally on Facebook as much as they are on Google.  This threatens Google’s business and has resulted in a battle between the 2 giant companies.  Google is beginning to attack back by attempting to create their own social networking features.

“Another threat to Google is Facebook's ad targeting system, which is based on granular information volunteered by users about their real-world identities, as opposed to preferences inferred from Web searches.”  Google has been trying to create social-networking-type services to compete with these threats.  They want to link Google Maps, YouTube, and Picasa to allow interactions between a network of friends.  It has also dabbled in social gaming applications.

Facebook and Google have tried to cooperate with each other, but their actions have greatly slowed this process down.  Facebook blocked its users from being able to use Google’s Friend Connect, and Google has prevented Facebook from transferring friends’ contact information from Google to Facebook.  The 2 companies continue to meet to try to come to agreements and resolve data-sharing matters.  No agreement has yet been made or released to the public.

Source: WSJ - Facebook vs Google