Why Google is so desperate for friendship

It's unclear how many users will flock to Google's new 
social offering, but it's clear is that they need them to.

There is a reason that Google is throwing such extensive efforts behind its social network development, and it’s bigger than just access to more of your information for targeted advertising.

Google’s search business accounts for over 90% of its overall revenue, and Facebook has the potential to devastate this business by delivering a truly social web.  There is a revolutionary shift coming, and Facebook is holding all the cards.

It comes down to a difference in philosophies.  Google has long taken the approach of delivering search results by overall web activity.  It has crawlers that scour the web to rank pages based on their overall activity and presence of primary information (i.e. the number of page views, links to that page, etc.). 

Facebook, on the other hand, delivers you the news and information via your networks, allowing you to tweak which friends, and therefore information is most relevant, so it can deliver even more tailored information to you.

The question this poses is simple and easy to answer.  When thinking of each individual’s tastes and preferences, which model would serve up the most relevant information?  Something based on all web activity, or on your social network?  Or put another way, which is a better representation of you and what you care about, your friends or the average of every internet user?

Don't be fooled... Google
CEO Eric Schmidt is more than
a little scared by Facebook

Google CEO Schmidt answered it himself, “If you think about it, it’s obvious… knowing more about who your friends are, we can provide more tailored recommendations. Search quality can get better.”

Google revolutionized the search market by realizing that a search engine could be more than just something to look up random factoids.  But with Facebook set to outperform it in every other aspect, Google’s search engine may return to just that.  The news and information you care about will be delivered to you via your Facebook news feed, no searching, no effort required.  Taking it a scary step further, if Facebook adds a “Search the Web” bar, Google Search’s reason for existence may be in jeopardy.  If you are already on Facebook, why navigate to another site for something as simple as search?

So is this to say that Google has been going about its business all wrong?  That these were things they should have anticipated and foreseen?  It’s easy to say in hindsight, but incorrect.  Fueling the rise of Facebook has been a sudden shift away from caring about privacy, the very thing that people fear about Google—and the invasive Buzz launch and Street View fiasco haven’t helped the situation.  And how could Google have anticipated that almost overnight, 500 million users would entrust an early-20’s Harvard drop-out with every intimate detail about their lives?  The only real misstep one can point to was failing to put more focus and resources behind their last two attempts, Orkut and Buzz.

Considering all of this, it makes sense why Google is throwing such extensive resources (even having Sergey Brin on the development team) and delaying the product’s launch until it is close to perfected (unlike their typical “beta strategy”).  They need it to be good.  In fact, they need it to be great.  They can’t have this flop like Buzz, and their future may depend on it.