With the continued growth of Facebook it has originally been considered by Google to acquire the fast growing social networking site. Internet users behave differently on Facebook than any other online site, users display their real names, use their real email addresses, contact their real friends and share their real thoughts, news and other personal information making it more than just a popular social network but instead a huge source of personal data, something that Google have a real lack of as they have a relatively small amount of data about its users other than their browsing activity and search queries.
But in recent news a not so happy Larry Page – Google’s co-founder – has received word that Microsoft have clinched the deal instead, making a $240 million investment for a 1.6 percent stake.
With Facebook now valued at around 15 billion the loss of the deal by Google was dealt as a big blow, especially seeing as they have never lost a deal this big. This resulted in the birth of a Google – Facebook rivalry which has now evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the internet.
Its common knowledge that the internet for the most part has been ruled by Google’s algorithms but Facebook’s CEO envisions a much more humanized web that will become a lot more personal in that our family, friends and colleagues will become our primary source of information, just as in the offline world. Their vision is that users will query this “social graph” to find an array of resources for example to find the best mobile phone, a local gym or someone to hire with the idea of taking people away from the cold mathematics of a Google search. This is a new way of thinking towards how we navigate throughout the online work and one that could see Google’s central search authority being replaced.
In the past a lot of people have tried to conquer Google and failed but Facebook has developed from a mere spec to a very worthy contender, becoming one of the most popular online destinations with around one fifth or all internet users being signed up to the social empire. Facebook has also poached a few of Google’s well known work force meaning their wealth of experience and knowledge continues to grow which has resulted is some of Google’s top executives admitting they are beginning to feel the threat and that a collision between forces is becoming more and more inevitable.
Although Google currently has the upper hand with its advertising profits using its adwords campaigns Facebook is working towards an even bigger market – the expensive branding campaigns that as of yet have barely ventured online. It seemed that Google had hoped that by forming an alliance with Facebook it would allow them to tap into such undiscovered markets and help to attract the huge advertising budgets but now instead of working as an alliance the two are in a head to head race to see which one can make it to the finish line first.
