Ethics in the Digital Age: Facebook vs. Google

"How Facebook Can Become Bigger in Five Years Than Google is Today" was an article title that I would never expect to see, hence why it quickly caught my attention. Today, Google has become such regular part of our lives, whether its for email, maps, class, blogs, etc. Google took the world by storm, and was even defined as a verb in 2006. Think about it, how often do you say, "Oh, let me Google that" ?

And then there is Facebook. That awful social networking cocaine that causes hours and hours of procrastination , drama, gossip, and connecting with friends and family. Its become a standard for employers, as a basic background check. Its become a way of finding long lost friends, family, or finding that "perfect someone". Its become a standard for advertisement, micro-blogging and searching.

So how do the two highest web destinations compete?

Search abilities, networking, and of course, money.

Caroline McCarthy, writer for CNet, describes the relationship between Google and Facebook in her article, and states:

Facebook dominates the social Web, and Google dominates everything else. Google wants to wrest a bit of control of social media from Facebook; Facebook plans to use the vast network of connections and communication channels it's built to more or less conquer the rest of the world. It's the case of a giant with a glaring Achilles heel versus a smaller, more nimble player with a finely-honed skill that can attack its competitor right where it hurts.

And that's exactly where Facebook is gaining strength, from it's vast network of connections and communication channels. Recently, Facebook formally launched Facebook Questions, a public question-answer site where users can ask questions and receive answers from any user. Similar to Yahoo! Answers, this provides internet users a organized channel of those odd questions that may be burning in your mind. Unlike Yahoo! Answers though, Facebook Questions do not appear in search engines, a bold move by Facebook. McCarthy states:

Among other things, Facebook's decision to keep otherwise public Questions to itself is a sort of posturing: It's telling search engines (e.g. Google) that with 500 million people using Facebook regularly, it doesn't need to rely on them for traffic referrals anymore. The Google training wheels are off. And Facebook Questions could be the feature that first makes the social-networking site a search-query destination in itself.

Facebook has also crawled its way to the top of people searches. Often, when you type a friend's name into a Google search, the initial results are Facebook pages. But Google has attempted to fight back with it's own social networking site. Google Buzz, intends to turn Gmail's millions of users into a personal social networking site where users can share personal information and communicate with each other. Google also reported that it had bought a social network start up Aardvark. Like David Rowan from The Times described it, "It was advancing its tanks even farther across Facebook's Lawn."

Adam Rifkin from TechCrunch gives a financial perspective on the battle:

Google’s 2010 revenues will be $28 billion, give or take a billion. The goal of this writeup is to illustrate the ways that Facebook’s annual revenues could grow from $2 billion to more than $30 billion in five years a diverse set of revenue streams that have one thing in common: people.

And the battle continues, place your bets.

Ethics in the Digital Age

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Facebook vs. Google

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