Google is hoping that the saying “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again” will work out for them with Google+.
Launched as a private beta version on Tuesday, Google+ is the search giant’s latest attempt at a version of Facebook. The company has tried this before with products such as Orkut, Google Wave and Buzz.
Google+ brings together four applications: “Photos” allows users to upload photos; “Hangouts” is a videoconferencing type application; “Sparks” provides a news feed; and “Circles”, which is the bit that allows “Googlers” to organise friends into different groups and share things with them.
The problem Facebook poses for Google is real. Both the current and former Google CEOs, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt have admitted they didn’t take the threat of Facebook seriously. Facebook users are already looking at more pages on the web than Google users (including YouTube) and spending longer doing it.
Advertising money will follow the users – and given this is Google’s main source of income – this poses a significant threat to its bottom line.
So why will Google+ never be a threat to Facebook?
1) The name. Google has always been tarred with the brush that it is run by engineers who by-and-large are not the world’s experts when it comes to social interactions. Proof of this comes in the choice of a technical-sounding name for a social service.
Why make a social site you want teenagers to hang out on sound like a computer language?
2) What if you threw a party and nobody came? Social networks, by definition, only succeed if there is a network of people to be social with.
Google will face a significant challenge in building up enough users on Google+ to allow for individual social networks to form. A typical teenager may have 700 friends on Facebook that has taken years to build up.
Unless Facebook decides to allow users to export all of their friends to Google+, rebuilding this network on a new site would be a task very few people would be willing to do.
3) You are a business colleague, not a friend. One of Google+’s selling points is the ability to group people into different categories and share with that group. Facebook allows this but it isn’t the main way of communicating with friends.
Although this feature allows users to be selective about what they share with whom, it makes the system harder to use. People don’t fit into neat categories; work colleagues can be friends too.
What people are interested in is not determined just by the fact they are a friend, work colleague, member of a club, etc.
4) I like it here. If people are unwilling to have multiple similar social network environments, the reasons for moving would be that you are either unhappy about Facebook or that Google+ offers you something Facebook doesn’t.
From the announced features, Google has not discovered the killer app in this space – there is nothing compelling enough to make someone move, along with the 700 friends they might have on Facebook.
It is also clear that Facebook is not going to sit by and watch Google+ take its market – any radically popular features introduced in Google+ would find their way into Facebook.
5) Here today, gone tomorrow. Google has a history of introducing and then killing apps that aren’t working out for them. The company recently announced that Google Health and Google PowerMeter are being discontinued.
Google Wave was killed off only a few months after its public launch. Given this history, people are going to worry that the same fate awaits Google+ if it doesn’t prove as popular as Google hoped.
6) The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Google+ is a collection of what are essentially four separate applications. Facebook is a single application. Putting a launchpad interface on separate applications doesn’t bring cohesion to the separate parts.
This is where Google still doesn’t understand that just because applications involve a social interaction, this doesn’t make them all equally relevant in social networks.
7) I’ve already said too much. Google is already regarded with suspicion when it comes to how much information they gather about their users and the uses they put that information to. There will be a general reluctance to share even more personal information with Google.
Admittedly, Facebook faces a similar perception, but the range of things people rely on with Google is different.
8) Who will tend the farm? Another feature of Facebook that Google+ won’t have is social games. FarmVille on Facebook has 38 million active users creating and tending for virtual farms.
Social gaming is another reason Facebook is so popular. It does not appear that playing games is a Google+ feature.
9) There is an app for that. Other than Facebook already doing what Circles does, videoconferencing is already covered by Skype and other applications, as are photo uploading and news feeds.
10) Google+, the movie. It’s never going to happen.
Are you enthused by the launch of Google+? Will you use it? Why?/Why not? Leave your comments below.
Join the conversation
Comments (13)
timl
(logged in via Twitter)
So here's my point by point take on things. I think I agree on most of the premises, but come to more optimistic conclusions :-)
1) The name: Agreed, it's not great, but as an engineer/science type, it doesn't put me (or a large chunk of my friends/colleagues) off :-)
2) What if you threw a party and nobody came? In the 6 or so hours I've been using it, it's certainly been getting plenty of use. It's no ghost town.
3) You are a business colleague, not a friend. People can be put in more than…
show full comment
Peter Miller
(logged in via email @perpetualocean.com)
Personally I think there are only 3 reasons: Location, location, location. I know many people who would jump the Facebook ship, but a FB competitor needs a critical mass to leave and set up camp elsewhere before they have the remotest chance of success.
Google+ won't do it.
timl
(logged in via Twitter)
I've been using google+ since about midday and in that time I've found 50 people to add to various circles. They had so many people inviting friends that they shut down the invites system around 2pm today.
It may or may not reach critical mass, but it definitely seems to be off to a good start!
Joe Short
(logged in via Facebook)
The main obstacle any competitor of FB has is the investment the user has made building contacts etc.
Perhaps in the interest of market competition, and thus better innovation, these things should be transferable and a market regulator should be stepping in to enforce this.
I tend to prefer google products and will certainly give it a shot. but i wish i could just transfer what i have on FB.
David Smith
IT Communications Professional (logged in via email @gmail.com)
The reasons I think it will succeed:
1. It's not Facebook.
2. You won't be able to easily migrate friends from Facebook to Google+.
3. A lot of people won't leave Facebook and therefore won't sign up for Google+.
4. I (and a lot of people) trust Google more than I do Facebook.
The big problem I have with Facebook is that they have very little regard for the privacy of their users. Time and again they've added a new feature that, by default, shares more of your personal information with friends…
show full comment
Karina Welna
(logged in via Facebook)
Your point about privacy, i fear, is a generational one. I find that the older people are the more concerned they are about who has access to their personal data, but conversely the younger you are the less likely you are to care. Gen Y has grown up on the web, and there is a generation out there who barely distinguishes between public and private, (often to their detriment, but thats the way it is).
I actually think, considering the commercialisation endemic in pop culture today, many teenagers…
show full comment
Michael J. Biercuk
(Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics at University of Sydney)
First, circles is exactly what social networks *should* be like. Facebook's policies on sharing of private information are shockingly bad, and have driven many to effectively wipe their profiles. Indeed, one may opt out but once information is shared it can't be recovered.
Indeed, there is a generational gap in the level of concern over privacy. That does not mean that we should support the absurd privacy policies enacted by facebook.
Ultimately the issue is not about trusting either corporation with your personal data - it's about a demonstrated track record of facebook changing security and privacy policies exclusively in the direction of more sharing. They don't give a workable solution to more restrictive sharing, while Circles, by definition, does. That's attractive.
David Smith
IT Communications Professional (logged in via email @gmail.com)
The Google+ solution to grouping your friends is called Circles. Sounds a bit corny at first, but the implementation doesn't look too bad at all.
There's a nice hands on write-up of Google+ here. http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/
Ramapriya Ramanuja
Avian Consultant (logged in via email @yoganote.com.au)
"A man's got to know his limitations" and a business should work to their strengths.
I suspect that too many companies in the sphere of computer hardware, software and the online world equate success with global domination in every sphere of endeavour. Google would be far better working out how to capitalise on the success of facebook, encourage its growth and profit from it, rather than attempting to overthrow it.
Lindsay Boyd
(logged in via email @yahoo.com.au)
I think that the cries of "It'll never work!" or "It's a Facebook-killer!" are premature at this stage, and tend to reveal more about the authors' own biases than any real analysis. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that I'm quite happy with Google over Facebook and although I'll continue to use Facebook as long as the majority of my friends do, I hope that Google+ survives long enough to become a viable social network of its own.
Now that's out of the way, here are my ten counterpoints…
show full comment
Matt de Neef
(Editor, The Conversation)
Wow, comprehensive reply Lindsay, thanks. I don't suppose you've got an academic posting somewhere, do you?
David Glance
(Director, Centre for Software Practice at University of Western Australia)
Actually, I would hazard a guess (no offence meant) that Lindsay is an Engineer. I personally don't have anything against Google and I am not a particular Facebook fan - however, I do note the irony (please note this, I am going to refer to it later) of a company that has pushed an email service on the basis of having all of your email in one place and not categorised should now say that communication is only possible by deciding how to classify and segregate it using Circles. G+ (in deference to all of the youth out there using Google Plus and knowing it by this name) may catch on - but I can pretty much guarantee it won't be because they can classify their 700 "friends" into circles - I am actually hanging out for a service that allows me to classify friends automatically determined by the content of my message e.g. this email is slightly ironic (see the note above), I will skip sending it to my Engineer friends? ;)
Lindsay Boyd
(logged in via email @yahoo.com.au)
No offence taken. Personally, I didn't have what it takes to be an engineer so I'm studying multimedia journalism instead. If you love irony though, I should note that Google had already tried to create a social network in the vein of Gmail and the result was Wave.