Google’s Open Social Vs. Facebook Widgets

By abhishek at 8 November, 2007, 3:23 am

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google at Stanford, their intent was to make the world’s most powerful search engine. They got their first cheque from Andy Bechtolsheim, not because they had a revenue model, but, they convinced the angel investor that there simply didn’t exist a good enough search engine in the market at that time and that Google would “change the world.” Bechtolsheim wrote a cheque of $100,000 in the name of Google Inc (which they registered a day after they got this cheque).�

That was almost a decade ago. Today, while it is still rightly called a search engine, it is much more than that! Google surprised everyone with their revenues which they had to reveal before they went public. They had created an online industry in advertising in the form of ‘text linked ads’ and sponsored links which was a first of its kind!

Today, the battle between Google and Microsoft is no secret. Google has consistently beaten Microsoft from under its nose to buy companies like salesforce.com, doubleclick and won the biggest coup when it bought Youtube. Now, the two companies bid really hard for a share in Facebook. Microsoft won it in the end where it paid more than $200 million for a 1.6 per cent change (Mind you, that’s how much they make while Bill Gates is taking a nap for a few minutes on his office desk).

Google played its next move. It unveiled its ‘Open Social’ applicaiton that allows developers to write applications that run on any social networking plaform. Why is it in the news? Unlike Google’s application, Facebook allows developers to make applications or “widgets”, but, the developers have to learn a proprietory language software. But, not many are complaining with 50 million registered users that Facebook boasts of.

Google which already owns advertising rights on MySpace is not too disappointed with Microsoft’s stake in Facebook because� now it has tied up with social networking sites like Google’s network, Orkut, as well as LinkedIn, Ning, hi5, Friendster, Xing, Plaxo and a few others. So, it’s Facebook’s 50 million registered users versus Google’s 100 million users through this alliance of social networks!

So, according to me, while Microsoft has won the bid for Facebook, Google has had a moral victory here. Google likes to play it cheeky, really cheeky.�

The Economist’s Andreas Kluth has written a small article on Google’s Open Social. I am more interested in the last line of the piece! It reads, ‘Meanwhile, Facebook is apparently about to reveal a new initiative in online advertising�a field dominated by Google.’

Andreas was kind enough to talk about his cover story, ‘Who’s afraid of Google?’ here on Indicast.

Have been often my blog, Why don't you subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Hope to see you again

Categories : Technology