The Inflammable Cold War between Facebook and Google

(Submitted for the ALGC - Prestige Magazine)

By Sami Ur Rehman

The liaison between Facebook and Google, the two Internet giants of recent times has eventually reached a point where it is more confrontational than ever, and the battle has ‘apparently’ just begun. It was not long ago that both the internet giants were working their own fields effectively and the entire World Wide Web was calm and quite.

Nonetheless, the war was triggered when Google surprisingly made a noteworthy announcement on Friday, 5^th Nov, according to which it forbid otherwebsites, like Facebook, to use its user database unless they reciprocate. This implies that Facebook, or any other website for that matter, could no longer import its users' email contact data information for their own purposes, until and unless the information flows both ways. Google primarily accused Facebook of ‘siphoning up’ Google contact data, without allowing for the automatic import and export of Facebook users' information, while Google has allowed it since always. Even though the rivalry between the two is inevitably emerging in the shape of a cold war, this announcement highlighted the sensitivity of the matter, and showed the amount of ever-increasing mistrust between the two Internet giants. 

Earlier on, Facebook users could easily give the social network the permission to look through their Google contacts for e-mail addresses via Google’s Contact API, and they automatically matched them up with user profiles to suggest people to befriend. Moreover if any user did not have an account on Facebook, one could send them an e-mail invitation to join — which is exactly how a social network goes viral. It is not unnoticed that Facebook itself has been able to gain the giant number of 500 million users so quickly, by the help of email services such as Google's Gmail to help find new users.

Facebook Co-Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg

However, this is not the first time Facebook has acted inappropriate and did not reciprocate with other services — unless they are partners. Facebook has a long history of blocking its rivals and until now it wasn’t really been seriously challenged. Just as soon as Twitter made their application in Facebook’s platform, in June, it gave users the ability to find which of their Facebook friends were also on Twitter, so that you could follow them or make a list of them to follow and fetch your Facebook updates into Twitter tweets. Facebook quickly shut that application down without any justification. Just recently, at the strategically very important Web 2.0 Summit that was held in San Francisco, Evan Williams, the Co-founder of Twitter himself spoke publically regarding his ‘frustration’ on the matter.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be biased if one says it was due to Facebook’s escalating insecurity which ignited this so called ‘War over Internet’. Just recently, a rumor prevailed that Facebook is about to introduce a new tool, which will aim to convince its huge number of users to set Facebook.com as the homepage of their browser, and it is not a mystery that if it gets successful, it will be displacing none other than the reign of another Internet giant ‘Google,’ in that place. When inquired about this advancement, Facebook did not reply right away. It's only natural that Facebook attempts to intrigue in the area where Google is so indefinitely influential. Simultaneously, Facebook is also implementing its own emailing service in phases, it guards itself from losing grip on user data – this move demonstrates Facebook's desire of sweeping its rivals Gmail by Google. In fact, before the actual announcement, this new social e-mail service was widely referred to as ‘Gmail Killer’. Moreover, Facebook is also slowly but steadily, improving its search feature. Rather than simply displaying results within the social network, now the search also finds preferred results from around the Web, where they have the advantage of using the actions of your friends — as part of the platform, in helping them to point out the best search results which is again seen, by critics, as an open move to sweep of their rivals.

Search is just another tool Facebook hopes to reinvent to atop its site. "Most industries are going to be rethought to be social and designed around people", Mark Zuckerberg said last week. "This is the whole evolution we've seen at Facebook". A very interesting recognition was made during a discussion which pointed out that Facebook is working tirelessly to not only steel users from Google search to Facebook search but also smoothly slipping them away from Gmail to Facebook Messaging, a suspected switch from Google Voice to Facebook with Skype, from Google Latitude to Facebook Places, and from Google Docs to Facebook with Microsoft Office.  No matter how tempting these services are, they cannot be used to predict the number of people who would actually switch in fashion. But one thing is sure, Facebook is definitely in attempt to beat Google at its own game.

Google already has many of the features of a great social network

Google is likely picking up this fight for not only been recently rolling out their improved features like Google Instant and Google Previews, but it is also anticipated that Google is launching its own social network, rumored to be called ‘Google Me,’ to compete with its rivals. Google already has an edge of having already having firm 176million users to start with.  Even though it is claimed that Google Me is not to compete with Facebook but is merely another "social layer" added to the existing vast variety of different Google products. It also seems rational since Google already has many of the features of a great social network. The integration among these is the key, and "Google Me" just might turn out to be that integration that connects Google's offerings, effectively making Google itself the social network. However, if you look at it from another angle, the integration of Google Products would itself become an enormous social network - large enough to even compete with even Facebook.

In a comparative analysis, Facebook has the news feed whereas Google is apparently working on the activity stream. Facebook has chat (text, voice, and video) and so does Google. Facebook has photos and so does Google; with Picasa Web Albums and various other complementary photo-related offerings. Facebook has videos; Google has YouTube (and Google Video). Facebook has notes; Google has Blogger. Facebook has Pages; Google has Profiles.  Google has Gmail; Facebook may also have it at some point soon (MySpace just added it recently). Facebook has games while Google is working on getting more. Facebook has news publications setting up Pages and Google has Google News. Facebook has the Open Graph while Google has ‘search’ including maps. Facebook has Facebook Ads and Google has AdWords, AdSense, and Doubleclick. Facebook has applications; Google has Google Apps, the Apps Marketplace, Android, the Android Marketplace, Chrome, Chrome OS, the Chrome Web Store, Google TV which will support Android apps and web apps. Google is also trying to get a music service off the ground.  And let's not forget two very user-personalized products – Google Calendar and Google Reader.

Even Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, expressed his views in Scientific American journal online, in a post entitled ‘Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality’ and condemned today’s successful social networking websites. He specifically gave reference to Facebook as well, for limiting the ‘openness’ of today’s web. He laid emphasis on reminding that “The web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles.”