I wonder which will grow faster over the next 5 years: Facebook or the rest of the Internet?
If it's the rest of the Internet, then Google is better positioned.
What's striking to me is how much Facebook's approach is not "of" the Internet; Facebook is a site that takes the best of the Internet and places it within the borders of its own site. They've done a great job of that to date: my mum uses it every day and loves it.
Google appears much more inclined to believe it will grow as the Internet grows, and they are investing accordingly. True, they haven't hit many home runs outside of search, but they are willing to contribute to the web, which is the ultimate vendor-agnostic platform.
Google is investing in things it can't control. Facebook is investing only in things it can. I'm overgeneralizing of course, but over time I think Google's open nature wins because consumers eventually reject those companies who gain too much control.
> True, they haven't hit many home runs outside of search
Except for youtube which is #4 worldwide and blogger.com #7, not to mention their adsense ads that are all over the web. And don't forget buzz, that is building an open distributed social network over the internet. I think google is doing real fine against facebook.
You can never be too sure. After all, chrome floundered in market share for a while before it really developed. Google certainly isn't a company to just let something decent lie around.
Google purchased Youtube and Blogger after they had both hit big-time traction. I'd hardly credit either success to Google. And Buzz a home run? Really?
They certainly do and deserve credit for not completely screwing them up. But besides keeping them running, has Google really done much to further either success? Blogger has remained pretty stagnate for the last few years. Would anyone here (looking for a hosted blogging platform, to keep things fair) choose Blogger for their blog today? Google has paid the bills for Youtube, granted (anyone know if Youtube is turning a profit yet?), but Youtube's success seems more attributable to its early-branding rather than any Google help.
Just to take a small example with youtube, they've created an entirely new ad platform. Building out an ad platform at that scale is by no means easy - there's an ad server, BT, targeting, reporting, payments to youtube publishers, not to mention recruiting a sales team. And that's just one aspect of youtube that google's had a hand in.
If it's the rest of the Internet, then Google is better positioned.
What's striking to me is how much Facebook's approach is not "of" the Internet; Facebook is a site that takes the best of the Internet and places it within the borders of its own site. They've done a great job of that to date: my mum uses it every day and loves it.
Google appears much more inclined to believe it will grow as the Internet grows, and they are investing accordingly. True, they haven't hit many home runs outside of search, but they are willing to contribute to the web, which is the ultimate vendor-agnostic platform.
Google is investing in things it can't control. Facebook is investing only in things it can. I'm overgeneralizing of course, but over time I think Google's open nature wins because consumers eventually reject those companies who gain too much control.