Google Faces Off With Facebook

It's been one year since Google bought web darling YouTube for $1.65 billion, a deal that came to symbolize a new iteration of Internet euphoria loosely described as Web 2.0.

The year since has seen the emergence of a new kind of web fever: social networking. No sooner had Google snapped up YouTube did Facebook—the Ivy League incubated social networking phenomenon—emerge as the next billion-dollar web startup.

Sure, Friendster and MySpace have been around for years, but in 2007, Facebook—which has turned down billion-dollar buyout offers—truly brought social networking into the mainstream.

If MySpace was popular with high-school kids and the young rock bands they idolize, Facebook is attracting career-minded college students and the business world bosses they hope will hire them.

In short, social networks have grown up.

Now Google, which has spent the last year printing money thanks to its search advertising business, is turning its attention to social networking with an ambitious campaign aimed squarely at Facebook.

Late last week, Google held a top secret meeting at its Mountain View headquarters attended by over a dozen "industry luminaries" at which the topic of conversation was "the Facebook issue," TechCrunch reported Friday.

Despite signing confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, three meeting participants spilled the beans to TechCrunch, editor Michael Arrington said.

On November 5, Google will announce a new set of APIs—basically code keys that let developers add small applications to bigger programs—designed to work with Google's existing social network, Orkut. By doing this, Google will allow developers to build third-party applications much like Facebook has done with its platform.

Here's where things get interesting. Arrington says that Google plans to "out-open" Facebook by "allowing third parties to both push and pull data, into and out of Google and non-Google applications."

In other words, unlike Facebook, Google will allow developers to build applications for Google's social network, as well as others, thereby leveraging networks outside of Google.

"If Facebook is 98 percent open, Google wants to be 100 percent," Arrington wrote, adding "this is a potential killer strategy."

Despite Google's search dominance and astonishing profitability, there have been areas where the company has fallen short. Web video was one of them—before the company bought YouTube. Social networking has been another—Google's version, Orkut, has failed to catch on.

If TechCrunch is right, Google is preparing to go after Facebook. And if there's one thing we've learned about Sergey, Larry and their band of Googlers, it's this: Do not underestimate them.

by Sam Gustin