Eric Schmidt: ‘Google Me Is A Social Upgrade, Not a New Standalone Service’

At the Google Zeitgeist conference, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt said that Google will add social features to the existing services, but it won't launch a standalone product to compete with Facebook. "We're trying to take Google's core products and add a social component. If you think about it, it's obvious. With your permission, knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better. Everybody has convinced themselves that there's some huge project about to get announced next week. And I can assure you that's not the case," said Eric Schmidt, according to MSNBC.

Schmidt also said that "the best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data. Failing that, there're other ways to get that information." Wall Street Journal speculates that YouTube is one of the services that'll add more social features. For example, you'll be able to see when a video is watched by many of your friends.

More Proofs That Google Me is Near?

Google Me is still just a rumour but the search giant continues to snap up firms that could help power it. It’s already grabbed social app firm Slide, social payments company Jambool and social address book creator Angstro this month. Now it’s completed its August shopping spree by snapping up mobile social app maker Social Deck. It looks like those Google Me plans are starting to take shape…
SocialDeck confirmed that Google has gobbled it up in a blog post last night. It didn’t disclose any details about the deal but Google has confirmed that it bought the firm for its mobile smarts. A spokesperson says: “We’re pleased to welcome them to Google…we think they’ll be great contributors with the Google Waterloo team as we continue to innovate in the mobile space.”
Google Waterloo in Canada is home to some of Google’s mobile search and advertising, Chrome and Chrome OS teams. With a Google Chrome web store in the works, SocialDeck could be very handy: it distributes gaming apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Facebook, flogs virtual goods and enables cross-platform play.

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Google Me is Coming Soon

Google buys Angstro, hires co-founder to build social networking service

The Internet giant, striving to counter the growth of Facebook, brings in Rohit Khare, whose firm had built innovative tools for social media.

Reporting from San Francisco —

Google Inc. is stockpiling technology and talent for what many believe will be a full-on assault against Silicon Valley rival Facebook Inc.

As part of its campaign to build a social networking service to counter the explosive growth of Facebook, Google confirmed Friday that it had bought up Internet company Angstro and hired its co-founder Rohit Khare.

Khare, a respected Internet researcher, is one of several new faces at Google charged with helping the Internet search giant compete for the eyeballs and dollars increasingly flowing to social networking.

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Google Me vs Facebook part 4

Through acquisitions, investments and internal development, Google is piecing together the makings of a social networking infrastructure – one explicitly designed to challenge Facebook, which has quickly emerged as one of the most potent forces on the web.

But as Google gears up for this big push, Facebook is keenly watching Google’s moves, and is bracing itself for a battle that will shape a more social phase of the internet.
“We are going to see a more cohesive, confident and sensible social push from Google in the coming months,” says Augie Ray, analyst with Forrester Research. “And it comes at a time where there could really be some risk to Facebook.”
The most visible evidence of this fight is Google’s sudden shopping spree. On Friday it bought Jambool, a company that runs virtual currency systems for social games, including those played on Facebook. This month Google paid about $200m for Slide, a major developer of Facebook applications with a wealth of talented engineers. And shortly before that it invested $100m in Zynga, the largest maker of social games.
“They failed to innovate on their own so now they’re throwing their chequebook at it,” says a senior executive close to Facebook.

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Google Me: Have We Been Using It All Along?

The rampant speculation around esoteric social platform Google Me is dominated by talk of Google's numerous failed forays into the territory.

Much of the skepticism is a result of a reasonable expectation that Google is building a destination site, one that could house games and messaging, formatted the way current counterparts are. But what if that's not the plan? What if Eric Schmidt's now infamous quote about not needing another Facebook meant that there is no destination site in the works? What would that even look like?

My guess is that there will be no big announcement, no shiny new product, and no sleek mobile app. I'd venture to say Google is about 20 steps ahead of us, putting the pieces for their platform in place, one product at a time.

Facebook's defining quality, embodied by the ubiquitous "like" button, is to forge connections between people, content and, ultimately, Facebook.com. Google has instead focused on mastering the art of singular products, some of which are organically social and some of which are not. From Maps and Places to YouTube and Gmail, the services are all-encompassing but not contained in a one-size-fits-all destination site. While Facebook operates on a platform-first model, forced to fit new features within an existing framework, Google is essentially a suite of pure features; what's missing is the glue that holds them all together -- integration and a fluid user interface.

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How Google Me Can be Better Than Facebook

Since everyone and your mother are on Facebook, users have little incentive to give it up, even with Facebook's existing flaws. What can Google possibly do to get people to make the switch?

Rumors that Google was starting a Facebook competitor named "Google Me" first surfaced in June, right after the latest wave of anti-Facebook furor. Clearly, there is an opportunity to challenge Facebook for the social networking title. If Google is in it to win it, however, the company has to do a few things that Facebook isn't doing--as well as a few things that Google has failed at in the past. Here's what we'd like to see in a next-gen social network.
Before Google Me: Orkut, Buzz, and Wave

Google has made several attempts to break into the world of social networking, namely through the Orkut, Google Buzz, and Google Wave stand-alone services. Though these offerings haven't managed to reach critical mass, bits and pieces of them may find their way into a better Google network.

While Orkut hasn't gained much traction in the United States, it has succeeded in other countries, most significantly India and Brazil. Part of that is due to Orkut's Promote feature, which lets users share videos and links--but unlike on Facebook, after you've promoted something on Orkut you can see how many people have clicked, viewed, or trashed your item. You can follow the path of your promotion to see how many of your friends have passed it on to other friends, and so on.

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Google me is Around the Corner - Should Facebook be worried?

There has long been talk that Google is ready to give Facebook a run for its money in terms of the social network space. Now, ZDnet reports that Google is just about ready to launch its "Google Me" social network - should Facebook be worried?

It may be important to note here that this isn't Google's first attempt at making a social networking dent. Orkut - Google's Facebook - has proven to be a successful website, but only in a few countries.

Rumors emerging from industry sources such as Venture Beat have all Facebook execs, engineers and other key players are under intense pressure over the next 60 days to ensure Facebook doesn't lose market share.

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Facebook in Lockdown - Preparing for Google Me?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put the company on "lockdown" for 60 days in preparation for a coming war with Google.

The reason: Google will launch a social network called Google Me sometime between tomorrow and the end of the year, according to a very widely accepted but unconfirmed rumor. The company is also buying up companies to fortify itself for the launch.

But why would a search engine company want to dominate social networking? The answer is that Google isn't a search engine company. Google is in the advertising business. It attracts users by offering a wide variety of free services. Google then uses those services to harvest information about users, which it can then leverage to sell more advertising at higher prices.

Facebook is in the exact same business. Facebook offers its free social network, and uses the activity of users to gain insight that helps them sell more and better ads.

Facebook has more than 500 million users, and is growing fast. According to some reports, Facebook sends more traffic to some types of Web sites than Google does. This no doubt threatens Google's intent to dominate the future of online advertising.

To fight back, Google has recently acquired a game-oriented virtual currency company called Jambool, a social gaming company called Zynga and a social networking applications company called Slide. Google had previously acquired the microblogging service Jaiku.

Google has already tried and failed in three ways to create a social network that can compete with Facebook. First, Google launched its social network, called Orkut. While the service became a hit in Brazil, and gained many users in India, the rest of the world responded to Orkut with an underwhelming "meh!"

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Google Me vs Facebook - part 3

If the rumours of Google Me prove to be true, who will win out in the battle of the social networks? We look at the fight blow by blow.
Facebook has long been the dominating force when it comes to social networks. Even with the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn, Mark Zuckerberg and his team have felt pretty safe with the crown.

However, now arguably the world’s biggest internet player, Google, is rumoured to be working on its own social network – dubbed Google Me – and with its acquisition today of Slide, these rumours look to be turning more into a reality.

So what will Google have over Facebook if this launch becomes reality? Or is the strength of Facebook too much for the search giant to take on?

We take a look at how the companies compete when it comes to social networking nous and if this could benefit your business.

How could Google take number one spot?

One search to rule them all…

Google is undoubtedly the king of search, despite the best efforts from the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo, but search is increasingly becoming a useful tool in social networking.

Twitter is renowned for its trending topics and now Facebook has jumped into the game with its Questions offering.

If search continues to grow and ends up playing a large part in this area of the web, Google is more than ready to exploit this aspect.

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Will Google Fail Again at Social Media?

Google is reportedly working on a blockbuster social networking product, after a string of failed attempts to get in on that market. But after so many failures, you have to wonder if Google culturally able to do social networking?

Google is working with several vendors of popular online games to develop a social networking service to compete with Facebook, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal's Amir Efrati. Google watchers are calling the service "Google Me." Among the companies it's talking to are Playdom, Electronic Arts' Playfish, and Zynga Game Network, vendors of the Facebook hit Farmville. Google recently took a financial stake in Zynga.

Google has tried to launch or acquire social networks several times, but fell on its face almost every time. Buzz, Orkut, and Dodgeball have never risen above niche products.

Social networking is arguably alien to Google's DNA. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Adam Rifkin explains the problem with a delightful metaphor: Internet users can be divided into two groups -- pandas and lobsters.

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Facebook Knows all About Google's Plans

A Facebook engineer was reportedly bragging on Friday at a TechCrunch party that Facebook has obtained copies of proprietary Google documents showcasing its strategy on the yet-to-be-announced ‘Google Me’ social networking, which is said to rival Facebook. The unnamed Facebook engineer is quoted as saying that Facebook “knows all about Google’s social product plans” thanks to the possession of those classified documents.

Mountain View-based Google has not yet confirmed rumors of its upcoming social products. However, several major sources in the tech industry have confirmed that the search giant is indeed planning to rival Facebook with a new social networking site called Google Me. Google has even been caught researching individuals’ social networking habits through focus groups.

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Google Needs Google Me

The undisputed internet advertising leader and search giant has for years been desperately hard at work to try to find alternate sources of revenue besides its ‘Adsense’ program. Numerous acquisitions and billions of dollars later – Google still hasn’t managed to find their next cash cow to give its board and investors a sigh of relief. Google execs are hoping that will all change with the upcoming rumored ‘Facebook killer’: “Google Me”.

Google already has a social networking platform to its name called Orkut – a relatively unknown networking portal outside of Brazil and India. Google also introduced recently something akin to Twitter in which web surfers could instantly share links, thoughts, pictures and a variety of other social media items through Google’s free email platform, Gmail.

Google has made it very clear with its 100 million investment in Zynga that it has made it a top mission to grab some of the social networking pie. There’s also the belief that Facebook is becoming so big that it might soon cannibalize the whole web and make Google and its main search product obsolete.

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Google Me Will Use Games as a Weapon Against Facebook

Google is spoiling for a fight with Facebook over the fast-growing market for online games, part of the search engine giant's latest attempt to build a social networking business.

The move would pit two of Silicon Valley's most powerful companies against each other.

Google is believed to have opened talks with several of the games developers that have come to prominence on Facebook, where millions of users play simple social games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, yesterday stoked talk about a push in social networking by promising that any Google service would be different from Facebook: "The world doesn't need a copy of the same thing."

Google gets $28bn (£18bn) a year in revenues from selling advertising alongside search results, but faces questions about whether and how to diversify. Internet users are spending more time in social networking sites, and linking to outside web pages from there, potentially cutting Google searches out of the equation.

Facebook, which is privately owned, celebrated the sign-up of its 500 millionth user this month. Its revenues have grown substantially, in part because it takes a 30 per cent cut of any sales generated by the games users play on its site.

And games developers have become some of the hottest properties in the technology industry, thanks to the popularity of so-called "social games" which can be played between members of social networks.

Google has already made an investment in Zynga, which makes FarmVille, whose 60 million users run their own virtual farms, and is also reportedly in talks about partnership deals with other developers, including Playfish and Playdom. Disney agreed this week to pay up to $763m to acquire Playdom, the maker of Sorority Life, in which users can pay to dress up their avatar and take her to online parties.

Google hopes to lure games developers to build its new social networking platform, which Silicon Valley rumours suggest will be called Google Me.

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Wall Street Journal - Google Develops a Facebook Rival

Google Inc. is in talks with several makers of popular online games as it seeks to develop a broader social-networking service that could compete with Facebook Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

Google has been in discussions with top developers to offer their games on a new service it is building, these people said. Those developers include Playdom Inc., Electronic Arts Inc.'s Playfish and Zynga Game Network Inc.—a company in which Google recently took a financial stake, these people said.
It is unclear when Google may launch the new gaming offering and the plans aren't finalized, but people briefed on the matter said the games would be part of broader social-networking initiative that is under development by the Mountain View, Calif., company.

In an interview this week, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt declined to confirm the development of a social-networking service that would incorporate social games, rumored to be called "Google Me." When asked if Google's service might resemble Facebook's, Mr. Schmidt said "the world doesn't need a copy of the same thing."

Google's push into social games represents the latest attempt by the Web-search leader to capture users and advertising dollars that are increasingly flowing to social networking, an area dominated by Facebook, Twitter Inc. and others.
For social-game developers, a successful Google offering would mean they wouldn't be so heavily dependent on Facebook, where the vast majority of users access the games. Consumers' appetite for social games is booming— Zynga's "Farmville" game has more than 60 million active monthly users—and that is attracting bigger players looking to tap new sources of growth. On Tuesday, Walt Disney Co. acquired Playdom for $563.2 million plus up to $200 million more if performance targets are reached. And retailer GameStop Corp. agreed to buy online game distributor Kongregate Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

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