OK, I am talking about Google again. Now, I am in two minds about this Google Social Media thing that they are working on.
Part of me says “but they don’t seem to get it, they want everyone to transfer to Google accounts, they are trying to bolt together a bunch of products all developed in isolation”.
Then another part says “But it’s Google, and they are bloody good at web stuff”.
I just read their latest update on the Blogger blogging on blogspot blog platform, called Fresh new perspectives for your blog. It talks about some new themes for Blogger which are all HTML5, CSS3 and Ajax funky. Sounds reasonably good. But they also have a video promo. It looks amazing. Here it is.
Now, 120% of the World’s population plus everyone on Mars use Facebook, so Google have a lot of work to do to catch up. But, they have one advantage over Facebook – their products are good.
Blogger, Google’s free blogging platform, has been around for years. You used to be able to FTP your blog to your own server, but Google pulled that. At the time I thought it was because of the FTP server problems. But now it makes more sense – Google was focusing on keeping content on its own servers for the future!
You see, Facebook do many things very well:
- Facebook has instant messaging. But Google has Talk with Video
- Facebook has messages. But Google has Gmail.
- Facebook has images and albums. But Google as Picasaweb.
- Facebook has Groups, Pages and Walls. Google has its own Google Groups, Sites, Blogger.
- Facebook has Events, Google has its Calendar.
Then Google also has so much more – Google Docs, Youtube, Android Apps, the Search Engine.
If Google can do this social thing right, if their fantastic tech guys can “get it”, then they really can make something that will blow Facebook away.
What are Facebook doing? Maybe developing their own web search engine. That’s it.
Really the biggest threat to Google is if Facebook manage to roll outs its own web search engine and then also place its Facebook ads on other sites too. This will be a kick in the teeth for Google.
The main differences between Google and Facebook at the moment is that people use Google to go somewhere, but people use Facebook to be on the web. Facebook is the destination for many people, Google is just the journey, and a brief one at that.
Google Social will turn a short trip into a juggernaut ride that will shove all competition out of the way. Or it will fall flat. Cannot wait to find out either way.
