Google Le Tiene Miedo A Facebook

¿Promueves Tu Negocio En Esta Red Social? Creo Que Deberías Considerarlo. Lee este articulo publicado en el Utah People Post. Esta en ingles, se necesitas traducirlo, puedes usar el traductor de google.

Disfrutalo…

NICOLAS LAVERDE

Earlier this week, Google entered (or re-entered) the social networking arena with the launch of Buzz. If you have not seen it, Buzz is a social networking service that is integrated into a person’s Gmail account. Once you activate Buzz, all your contacts will be added into a new social networking model that seems to be a hybrid between Facebook and Twitter. It also has the ability to link other Google services such as Picasa (photo sharing), Youtube (video sharing), and Blogger into your network so friends can see new activity on those sites all in one place.

This is not Google’s first attempt at entering the social networking fray. Several years ago Google launched a social networking site called Orkut. While not gaining significant traction in the United States, Orkut has over 100 million users worldwide that are primarily concentrated in India and Brazil. This, in contrast to Facebook, whose 400+ million users spend over 6 hours per month perusing their network on average, was only a moderate success at best.

Why is Google so concerned about social networking? Despite what you may think, it is about more than just trying to provide you with cool new stuff. Google sees a looming threat from Facebook and Buzz is one way of trying to preempt this threat.

Google – which generated $23.6 billion in revenue last year – is a relative giant compared to Facebook – which is thought to have had revenue of around $500 million in 2009. The reason Google is so worried about this little company doesn’t have as much to do with what Facebook is doing now, but rather what they have the potential to do and become.

Before proceeding, it is important to understand how Google makes money. Nearly $22.9 billion of revenue was generated from selling search related advertisements last year. Said differently, 97% of Google’s business comes from selling advertisements. The reason they can generate so much money is because their dominance in the online search business.

Far more people use Google than any other search engine. Google has built this dominance by delivering the most relevant search results using a methodology developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were graduate students at Stanford University. Their search model trumped Yahoo!’s, which had previously trumped AOL’s and various others’. As long as Google is the place most people go when they want to find something, they have nothing to worry about.

Enter Facebook. Imagine a search engine that seemed to know your specific interests and tastes. Imagine searching for something and having the results ranked by factors such as your age, where you live, your occupation, your religion and associated values, the interests and likes of people you associate with, etc. In other words, imagine a search engine which adds factors from your social network to the current search algorithms used by Google. This concept has the potential to deliver very targeted and relevant information.

With Facebook’s rapidly growing – and already enormous – user base sharing more and more information online, this concept suddenly does not seem too much of a stretch. Google’s past behavior seems to indicate their recognition of this fact. In 2007, Google developed what is called OpenSocial in conjunction with MySpace. OpenSocial is basically a common language developers can use to build applications for social networks. Most of the large online social networks, with the notable exception of Facebook, now use this common standard. From every angle, this seems to have been an attempt to reduce the growth of Facebook by empowering its direct competitors.

Orkut and Buzz are two more examples of how Google is seeking to prepare for what Facebook might become. Google is not a company that will go away easily. They are too big, too admired, and have an enormous war-chest (i.e. lots of money). However, despite the various and innovative things Google is doing, when it comes to making money they are a one-trick-pony. If Facebook can somehow provide a superior search model, advertisers will flock to them because of their existing user population. This would significantly diminish Google’s hold on this lucrative business.

Microsoft is also an important participant in this battle. Last year Microsoft launched Bing.com which touts many helpful features not available with Google. Perhaps what is most interesting in light of the recent launch of Buzz is the fact that Microsoft is a shareholder in Facebook. Combine Microsoft’s Bing.com with Facebook and all of the sudden the threat to Google becomes much scarier. (On a related note, it is expected that Microsoft will be releasing a public beta version of what they are calling Outlook Social Connecter as early as next week. This is said to be in conjunction with Facebook, LinkedIn, and others.)

Buzz has the potential to help Google improve the relevance of its own internet search model and thus strengthen its core business – all $23 billion of it. In the coming years, we should expect to see some significant steps forward in the way internet search results are delivered. The process of getting there is certain to be fret with privacy concerns and a continuation of the chess match we’ve been witnessing between the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

FUENTE: Utah People Post

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