

Google's Secret Social Initiative Delayed Until Spring, 2011 - hornokplease
http://mashable.com/2010/11/29/google-social-2011/

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dstein
They really need to give up and turn their attention elsewhere, because
whatever replaces Facebook simply cannot be built by Google. And it doesn't
matter how hard they try, because Google will build their social network in
typical Google style -- a big, monolithic, overarching, ugly, centralized,
database intricately geared for maximum advertising revenue. And that is
precisely why Google will fail. At this point, a true Facebook threat would
need to be something quite radically innovative that Google would never have
even thought of it because they're focused on advertising dollars.

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patrickaljord
> Google will build their social network in typical Google style -- a big,
> monolithic, overarching, ugly, centralized, database

Actually they are working hard on pubsubhubbub, activity streams, portable
contacts, salmon and all the other federated web stack protocols in order to
make facebook (and twitter) features available to any apps (wordpress,
diaspora, status.net, gnusocial, buddypress already implemented those). They
are trying to make social something open, in other words they are trying to
pull an android on facebook by making it irrelevant or at least not as needed
as all websites will get the same features. You will be able to communicate
with/share photos with/follow your wordpress friends from blogger.com or
diaspora or status.net or buzz. Only time will tell if it will be as
successful as Android.

I think this is a good strategy, google can't beat facebook at their own game
by creating a facebook clone just like they could not have beaten the iphone
with their own phone. Making all of facebook features an
open/easy/distributed/federated stack and attacking facebook with the help of
the rest of the web seems like a much better strategy.

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flyt
You mean OpenSocial?

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patrickaljord
No, ostatus.

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InclinedPlane
Google is a systems/infrastructure company. They should figure out how to
build frameworks that other people can build on top of and turn into something
real and usable than to try to build everything and copy everyone else. Google
isn't Apple, or Facebook.

