Can Google defeat Facebook

Heath Verhasselt

It’s been almost two months now since the rumors in regard to Google’s “Facebook killer” started popping up.

Supposedly called “GoogleMe,” this will be Google’s second attempt at a social network — see Orkut. However, this time it’s no longer just a side project; Google has supposedly dedicated a large number of engineers and has its top people working on it.

What will this site look like, you might ask? Although not confirmed, one could theorize that Google will combine what it already has and put it under one name.

Here’s the formula: Take the already-existing “Google profiles” set up more than a year ago, and with that you can integrate Google Chat for instant messages and have built-in Gmail. Videos could be easily integrated into the site — the company owns YouTube — and it could set up Picasa for photos. Google Search could be built in, not to mention the largest ad network on the Internet. Google has so many products it might have to leave some out. However, expect maps, shopping and calendar to also play a large role in GoogleMe.

Now, the question is: What could Google do differently that would make people drop Facebook en masse to GoogleMe? Different groups of friends.

Google claims it understands the whole “mom on Facebook” thing and is working on ways to address it better than Facebook does. It plans to help you keep separate parts of your life separate and keep your mom out of your “personal” personal life.

Can this actually be done? I certainly hope so, but more than likely it will have issues and might end up like what we have today: a bunch of people filling out ridiculous quizzes, playing awful games and complaining about things no one really cares about.