Should Facebook Be Worried?

[Vern]

I feel bad for the employees at Google. One day they're working on refining a search engine. The next day they're working on social networking and cell phones, and pissing off China then obliging China. Now that they've scratched social networking and they're working on social network games. In the meantime they've managed to ruin their image search function. Must be a hectic day around the office.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Internet war! Take your positions men and spam! Spam ads like there is no tomorrow!

OT: Facebook is quite entrenched now, well at least here it is. The Facebook logo is quickly becoming standard in advertisements both on billboards and on the radio. "Visit our Facebook page" has become more and more common. I think Facebook has this generation on the hook.

But...

Google has a lot of money and big company partners behind it. It will be a bloodbath come 2020 with new generations of teenagers looking for social networking. Time to head to your internet bunkers people!

 

[Nurb]

How long until google becomes too powerful, too greedy, and has too much information?

 

[Jandau]

I get the feeling they are missing the point. Facebook isn't popular because of social gaming, social gaming is popular because of Facebook...

 

[Vyce]

Hm. Google and Social networking.

Right. Wave is considered dead and Buzz as far as I can tell isn't making as big of a splash. I've lost interest in the current selection of Facebook "social games", I used to do things like Castle Age and whatnot on Facebook but I eventually lost interest and mostly use FB for what it was originally made for, social stuff and chatting (Unless they start pulling in flash games and the like)

As for Chrome, it was great for awhile but it start frustrating me with flash lagging Chrome and my computer to hell, and it's multiple processes causing trouble too. Now I've had enough and I'm back on Opera. xD

 

[Kavonde]

I dunno...I have faith in the Almighty Google and plan to vote for their candidates in the 2012 election (thanks, Supreme Court!), but I think they're missing the point; most Facebook users aren't there because they want to play FarmVille, they're there because everyone else is. Addictive social games are just a bonus.

Also, I kinda thought Google Wave was already going to be their anti-Facebook.

 

[Locko96]

Google just fails at every thing they try to do to compete with others on a developed market.

 

[blankedboy]

Very interesting. Although Facebook has the money to do almost anything they want, it's been estimated that Facebook is worth more than all the money in circulation.

I just said all, and all means all.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

There's nothing like making your company grow by exploiting and selling out your customers. Good job Zyanga. Burn in Hell.

Social gaming can fuck right off.

 

[cerebus23]

google is growing into a evil empire, but they are not quite patient enough is their major failing, they feel they need to rush things out see their phone venture that looked great on paper but had way too many issues to compete with its rival.

me i wish all these social network sites went bye, just too much bs that goes on from the heads that run them to the people that use them. google is no saint in the user privacy area but there are worse offenders out there.

suppose i will be rooting for google a tad just to take fb down several notches tho i will never ever use googles social site since i never used myspace, facebook, or twitter ever.

 

[Delusibeta]

This all assumes that Google's gaming platform will succeed: which is no guarentee. Remember Buzz?

 

[Deadman Walkin]

I don't think Google will do much. Why do I say that? Even though I am sure Google will get the standard applications like farmville and other awful boring excuses for games too, but for the facebook community to go to Google well, THEY WOULD LOSE THEIR FARMS AND HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN. Oh noes, that would be awful.

On top of that, if a few friends didn't go to the Google social site, it would be much harder to show them just how good you are at farmville, and even harder to spam them annoying requests to water their plants!

All in all, Facebook will crush Google's site, why? Even if Google creates some cool innovations and such, it would take a lot to pull people over.

 

[Orange Monkey]

I keep imagining the forces of Google lined up in roman chariots and warhorses on one side, and the forces of Facebook as crusader knights!

 

[silversun101]

Triple by 2012?!?! Holy SHIT!! This is what the Mayans were talking about! Social gaming will bring about the prophesied downfall of the world!!!

 

[Jordi]

I'm not thrilled. I'm not particularly fond of the whole social networking concept, so I don't really want to see it become bigger and better. And it will have to be either that, or Google failing at this (which seems more likely to me, but I kind of like Google; see rest of post). I think it's really hard to compete in the social area of the market, because there generally isn't really an easy way for people to switch (if I think Chrome is a good browser, I can just switch, but if I think Googlebook is better than Facebook, I need my friends to switch as well).

I think Google needs to make switching as easy as possible, possibly by aggregating information from Facebook if that's possible. A killer app might also work, but I doubt it will be social games. First of all, those probably also require that your friends switch and second of all, I think that most people use the sites because of the social networking aspect and the games are only useful for prolonging their stay.

Then again, it's not like Google has never taken over a market before.

Google can't beat Facebook with this generation.

If everyone has already established themselves on Facebook and they have all their friends together and all their photos why would they go go through the trouble of reestablishing all that all over again on an entirely new system which many of their friends may not even be a part of.

A couple years before Facebook, people used Myspace. You'd find it funny how quickly people will switch given to whatever the current trend is.

Was MySpace ever as popular as Faebook is? (I honestly don't know)

As long as the new Google site has PROPERLY WORKING CHAT I am on board *grumbles* Don't see why its so hard for Facebook to make a chat system that actually works.

Google already has their own chat software (Google Talk) that also works in GMail. I don't use it, so I don't know if it fits your idea of "working properly".

Google just fails at every thing they try to do to compete with others on a developed market.

Search engines existed before Google did. E-mail existed long before GMail did. Route planners existed before Google Maps came along. Just before the iPhone 4 came out, Android had become the most sold mobile OS.

"History has shown that... Google dominates them"

Question: Google is now the biggest search engine, yes. Where else are they big? I certainly know it isn't for Chrome; that thing has less of a share than firefox.

Google obviously has search, Android, Maps and GMail. They also bought the biggest video site YouTube, and I'm thinking that AdSense is probably the biggest advertising platform(?) in the world and Translate the most used translation service. They also have some really nice resources for (web) developers (Google Code, Analytics, Charts, Gadgets). Furthermore, I think products like Chrome, Calendar/Agenda, Reader and Docs are also fairly succesful (although probably not market leaders).

They have a lot of products. Many of which are at least somewhat succesful, some of which are not. It seems that lately they haven't really been on a good streak...