Google Me? No thanks
Like Google Wave and Google Buzz before it I would say that this is likely to create a lot of press interest before slowly fading into obscurity.
In my opinion, there are a few reasons for this and to get a grip on the most compelling of these we need to look at the rise of Facebook as the pre-eminent force in social networking today.
Before Facebook there was MySpace. MySpace, apart from having the worst interface design known to man, was one: focused on the teen and music markets; two: successful primarily in the US and three: slightly ahead of the curve.
Facebook, on the other hand, was focused on the college market in the US and only once it had conquered that did it open up for the rest of the world.
Facebook, also because its audience was college students moving out into the working world, had a natural growth path as new friends and work colleagues were added to the list of friends on the social network.
MySpace, however, hit the glass ceiling as soon as its high-school users went to college and started using Facebook to keep track of their new college friends.
But what does this have to do with Google vs Facebook. Well the simple issue is that even with Facebook flaunting our privacy at every turn it still fulfils the needs of the majority of users. There are things that it doesn’t do well, like catering for niche groups or location-based services, but on the whole it works very well.
So what would it take for the millions of people that are currently using Facebook to switch to a new social network?
There would have to be one of two things: a massive stuff up on the part of Facebook (repeated downtime, huge privacy breach, losing all your friends) or there would have to be some new service that offers functionality so mind-bogglingly awesome that even your mother would be tempted to move across.
You see the problem. When was the last time that you couldn’t get into Facebook (as compared to the regular downtime from Twitter) and do you see Facebook messing up in a monumental way?
And when it comes to functionality, should Google come up with something truly mind-blowing how long would it take Facebook to match that functionality.
The fact is that Facebook is still growing, even in India where Google’s Orkut is the dominant player, Facebook is about to overtake it. That would leave Brazil as one of the few non-Facebook territories.
The one thing that I think seals the deal against Google is the issue of power. Google, right now, holds a great deal of power. If you are a Gmail user and, like me, use GTalk and Google Contacts as well, then Google has access to a lot of information about me. They may not use it but they have it. Facebook, also, has a lot of information about me.
Can you imagine what will happen if suddenly all of that information is sitting with Google. Maybe Google remains the benevolent servant of all the internet or maybe it decides one day to monetise your information.
Personally I would prefer to have two centres of power when it comes to my personal information rather than putting all my eggs in one basket.
It is simply too late for Google to get into the social networking game and even if it wasn’t I would prefer if they didn’t.
Google Me versus Facebook << comments and views
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