Precisely how is Facebook planning to rationalize the $100 billion value that the public market is put on it? By making lots of money. Where are they going to get that money? From Google.
At attempt to take it away from Google. While Facebook is a social network and Google a search engine, each company make money from advertising and marketing, and they are both fighting for the very same advertising dollar.
Facebook and Google represent different time periods in technology. Facebook is definitely the present day “ social era”. Google is the receding past. In most major technology shifts, the leaders of one era usually do not lead the next. They may survive as valuable company, however they don’t drive people to the next big thing.
With that statement in mind, Google has its day as #1. Make room for a new leader. Google is valuable, however, not essential to the near future. Leave that for the brand new kids, with their vitality and new ideas.
Keep in mind, bumping Google from the leading position will not be very easy. Google is not stagnant. Its core company is still developing. As well as its leadership continues to be wise enough to see the Facebook’s agenda. Google has launched significant new social initiatives while improving its primary items. They have moved successfully right into a completely new market of mobile operating systems.
Here are several battlegrounds where Facebook and Google are competing for in the year to come.
Search Results
The internet is the foremost area of information the world has ever known to this present day, and Google has been doing the most effective job of figuring out how to extract what’s saved on it. Google’s trick is not only collecting its very own copy of the Web, but exactly how it picks bits of information to give to users and just how it ranks the final results: The PageRank algorithm.
Facebook knows who’s connected to whom. That’s its primary importance. That social data enables you to develop a more socially-aware search, and Facebook is doing just that in partnership with Microsoft and Bing. With this partnership it combines social results to an information search.
Google is working on keeping its search in front of Facebook in both social and traditional areas. Its “Search Plus Your World” feature combines social signals into search results. Google does not have the level of social data that Facebook does, but this system does show that the search company can incorporate highly personal social data into a search. At the same time, Google continues to improve plain old keyword search.
Google is engaging in social search. Facebook is getting its social network into general search. These two are starting to collide in this enterprise. Google has the advantage. However for how long?
Social activity
Facebook totally suckers users into its services. The typical U.S. user consumes 7 hours and 45 minutes on Facebook per month. Google is about 2 hours a month. That’s a large amount of a lot of time that can be used to create ad views and generate business earnings.
Google, to its credit, does clearly understand the value of social connections. Google+ is, in many ways, a better-designed social system than Facebook itself. Specifically in the actual way it handles variable privacy through its Circles concept. However it doesn’t have the worldwide connected user base of Facebook, and it’s not clear that Google can move user’s main social attentions from the site where their friends happen to be already.
Google probably cannot dismount Facebook as “The Social Network”. But Google can chip away at Facebook’s users, and the social network is not invulnerable.
Identity
To own the social index, running a Web site like Facebook or Google is merely a piece of the answer. Both companies have determined solutions. Facebook connect is the most popular solution. It lets users quickly authorize your free account while using Facebook login. It is also getting used quite a bit for mobile logins.
The value to Facebook is enormous. Facebook collects data in which systems users are signing up for, which of their friends also are subscribing to them, and how everyone connects.
Google has identity solutions, but for many logging into Facebook makes more sense. Facebook is the place where users go to interact and be themselves. Facebook is becoming the standard for signing in to new services. Google must step up its game here.
Advertising
Search, identity, and social will be the rock that makes up the money-making alloy of advertising. Google is a $40 billion company built on innovation and execution in advertising. That business isn’t going away anytime soon.
As Facebook continues to extend its reach in advertising programs, and through Bing they will continue to pound on the search engine business. This might make a dent in Google’s dominance in the market.
Google has revealed the way people search compared to how they use social sites is really a substantial difference in how advertising on web sites works. When users perform Google searches, they’re searching for information. Advertising, at its best, is seen as just more information. Advertising on Google works well with that precise reason.
On Facebook, the intent of users is hardly ever searching for a product to buy or a plane to book. Facebook is utilized to find friends to talk with or brag to. This social intent doesn’t reinforce advertising to the same extent. Still, Facebook can be very effective for building brands, and it’s a good platform for running social campaigns.
Mobile
Users are getting off their computers and interacting on their smartphones and tablets. Facebook of course has mobile apps, and mobile aspirations including, perhaps, building its own hardware. But it is clear that Facebook isn’t a native in the mobile era.
Google has either most or the second-most powerful mobile operating system there is, and thru it, control of many users’ mobile experiences. Google also, finally, has begun making apps that seem indigenous to the small screen. The new Google+ app for iOS is a beautiful app. It is a more integrated and much more thought-through experience than Facebook offers.
Neither company has figured out steps to make advertising work on the mobile platform. This is the next big battleground. But until then, the businesses both are smart to do whatever they can to encourage users to stay with their small-screen experiences. And the more mobile power they can keep, the less they’ll wind up under the thumb of Apple — the true leader in mobile innovation.
