Digital Media Buzz > Is Google in Danger of Becoming AOL?

Is Google in Danger of Becoming AOL?

By Patrick Patullo

In the 1990s America Online was going to take over the world, or at least the Internet. The Web company had the most traffic, the most e-mail addresses and the highest profile. Then, like the railroad companies at the dawn of air travel, history stepped in. ISPs sprouted by the dozen and began offering e-mail for free, portals lost their luster, and Internet content became free.

AOL failed to realize that the future of the Internet wasn’t in portals or e-mail but in search. Specifically, the future was serving tiny little ads based upon someone’s search query. A scrappy little search engine called Google got it, AOL didn’t.

Today, we are at a similar point in the Internet’s history. Instead of search, the buzz is about social networking. The buzz is about Facebook. The buzz is about Twitter. The buzz is anything but Google. This begs the question. Is Google sitting out this social networking fad, or is history repeating itself?

In terms of pure social networking there are few arguing that Google isn’t behind.

In an eye-opening note, Ross Sandler of RBC, estimated that Facebook will surpass Google in size sometime in 2011-2012. Sandler, quoting statistics from Comscore, said Facebook also now accounts for 19 percent of Google sessions, up from 9 percent a year ago.

“Facebook is actually positive and complementary for Google thus far, but that could change if Facebook’s rapid growth trajectory continues on its current path, or if/when social media can find a business model and attract ad dollars from other online media,” Sandler writes.

Facebook has also been making talent raids on Google’s staff. In late March, Facebook tapped Ethan Beard, Google’s director of social media, to head up Facebook’s Business Development unit. Beard joined COO Sheryl Sandberg, former CFO of Google’s YouTube; and Gideon Yu, a former host of Google engineering talent.

Meanwhile, Google’s Orkut social network took off like a rocket — in Brazil, and only in Brazil. The network fizzled outside of Brazil and to a lesser extent India.

Google still has one big advantage over Facebook. It makes money, while Facebook (as well as Twitter, MySpace and other SocNets) is struggling with a workable business model.

Centralized Social Media vs. Decentralized Social Media

Forrester Research’s social media analyst Jeremiah Owyang follows the Internet and social networks for a living. He sees the same parallels to AOL in the mid-1990s but believes it’s Google that will succeed in the end.

“Imagine AOL back in 1995 when you could only e-mail other AOL users,” Owyang said. “AOL wanted to get people to join AOL so they could e-mail. Low and behold a new protocol emerged, which allowed anybody to e-mail anybody regardless of where they are online, called SMTP.”

The same battle lines surrounding e-mail in the 1990s are going to be replayed across the social media landscape, according to Owyang. This time, the debate will be over centralized social networks like Facebook and Twitter and decentralized ones that Google is building. Yes, according to Owyang, Google is indeed strategically building a social network.

“Google’s strategy, and we’ve seen this over and over, is that they play for the open Web. They don’t play for single destinations,” Owyang said. “They have a very Zen-like strategy when it comes to Facebook. They are going to go around it by using open standards and open protocols.”

The key to Google’s strategy is its recently launched Google Profile service, which allows Google users to set up profile pages. The service is ostensibly designed to produce better results when people search for each other online, however, it is seen as Google’s centerpiece in a plan to dominate the social media landscape.

“Facebook may have 200 million registered users but Google has much, much more with established, data, e-mail accounts and log-ins to different Google sites,” Owyang said. “And the way it couples with the Google search engine results makes it more powerful.”

Combined with OpenID, Profiles is where Google hopes most people will be doing their social networking, meaning they won’t have to go to Facebook or Twitter to network with friends or colleagues. If Google’s strategy wins out then social networking will be everywhere a user browses. Buy something at Amazon and you’ll see all of the Google Profiles of your friends who bought it before you. Read a review of a new laptop at CNET and you’ll see all your buddies who have purchased and reviewed the machine.

And, if Google has its way, all of this will be done through its new browser Chrome.

If this sounds a bit like Facebook’s Beacon disaster, which angered so many users over privacy concerns that Facebook had to pull the plug and pull it quickly, you find many arguments. Privacy concerns over social networks are growing and cast the largest shadow over all these rosy predictions for growth and adoption.

Even Owyang admits that social networking players, such as Google, Facebook or Twitter, are going to hit some bumps on their way to nirvana and mainly those bumps are going to be in the area of privacy.

In his Forrester report, “The Future of the Social Web,” Owyang writes that “Privacy will continue to scare users as they connect with brands … but as the millennials begin to lead in both consuming and adopting new Web experiences, their experience with public sharing will lead the way for less trusting generations.”

It’s tough to shrug off privacy concerns but Owyang is confident that the issues can be overcome. Perhaps the only thing we can trust or know for certain is that the future of social networking is being sorted now, and whatever shape it takes will influence the Internet for years to come.

The Google SocNet Ecology

The good, the bad and the ugly of Google’s social networking offerings:

Orkut — Google has a social network and it’s called Orkut. Don’t feel like you’re out of touch if you haven’t heard about it. Most people haven’t with two key exceptions. Orkut is wildly popular in Brazil and India. If you do have an Orkut account than you know it does pretty much everything that Facebook does, except be popular, again unless you live in Brazil or India.

Google Profiles — Where Orkut fizzled, Google seems to have higher hopes for Google Profiles. Profiles was introduced last month as an easy way for Google users to pull together all of their personal content, such as links to blogs, photos, even Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. It sounds a bit like a social network and has a snazzy-looking layout, but it still lacks the fluidity of Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s very much a work in progress but could prove to be highly influential.

Google Friend Connect — No it isn’t a social network but maybe that’s the point. Friend Connect let’s developers add code to their sites to make their sites more social. Perhaps the greatest feature is that it allows users to login using any of their current accounts: Google, Yahoo, AOL or OpenID.