Facebook is trying to stake its claim on Google’s territory.
The consensus in the technology world is that Facebook’s Monday event will see the release of Facebook email service of some class, a direct shot at Google’s Gmail. While this is the most obvious shot that Facebook has taken at Google, it’s hardly the only one. Moreover, Google has fired a few volleys of its own at the social network massive.
This most fresh bout between the two companies, as well as fresh tensions and accusations of employee poaching, raises one obvious question: Since when is the technology industry a gang war? That is, why are Facebook and Google horning in on each other’s territory?
The war between these two companies is not all that surprising, given that they are two of the biggest, most powerful technology companies in the world. What is surprising is the lack of delicacy with which they are trying to poach each other’s user base.
This started in earnest about eight months before, when Google released Buzz. The technology press went completely gaga for the product, stating that Google had revolutionized social networking by placing it right in users’ Gmail accounts. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see how wrong that prediction was.
The service was flooded with privacy complaints, quickly became unused and is now little more than an icon on the side of users’ Gmail accounts which remains continuously unchecked. In fact, it’s so unused that even spammers have stopped using it.
Amusingly, the buzz (no pun intended) around Facebook Mail sounds eerily similar to what we were hearing about Buzz around the moment of its launch. People are saying that the possible semantics that could be built into a Facebook mail client would wipe the floor with Gmail.
In fact, the line “email inside of a social network could be a game-changer” has been bandied around by additional than a few writers. Sound familiar to anyone else?
Both Facebook and Google possess a likeminded drive toward innovate. Both companies include revolutionized their respective industries. Both companies have had (to put it lightly) privacy disasters in recent months. But the fact of the matter is that Facebook and Google are extremely different.
There are indisputable differences between the two companies. Google’s business model revolves around single source of revenue: ads, ads and more ads. They pay for the entire show, and while the company does plenty of other things, its entire business model revolves around serving these ads. In fact, lots of company’s products – such as Android – exist largely because of their ability to serve ads.
Furthermore, Google is unabashedly wonky. They succeed in the markets they succeed in because they have built a product that has extra functionality and works better than anyone else.
This kind of logic serves them particularly well in the Search, Maps and Mail markets, among others. Their products in these sectors are far cleverer than any of their competitors, and they’ve essentially achieved ubiquity. Of course, this cuts together ways. Buzz failed badly for these reasons, as did Wave. In fact, the only thing Wave did well was exactly invoke the feelings that a senior citizen has while trying to use the Internet for the first time.
These products incorporated extra features and tie-ins than any competitor did (although Wave really had no competitors). In the end, though, these layers and layers of functionality afraid off most users. No one really understood what made Wave or Buzz must-have products.
By contrast, Facebook’s products have forever reflected the company’s roots. If the Social Network is to be believed, Mark Zuckerberg created The Facebook to win the respect of the trendy cliques at Harvard. Today’s Facebook still reflects this ancestry, even after six years. It’s relatively straightforward, it doesn’t use complex layers of functionality and at its essence, and it’s a tool to organize your social life. It’s collaborative, but as a consequence has a free-wheeling attitude towards privacy.
This evaluation encompasses the differences between the two companies. And therein lays the massage. Most Google and Facebook users aren’t aware of the amount of information they put into the hands of these companies. In the same way that you wouldn’t let the nerd (Google) plan your social life, you possibly would be reluctant to trust the loose-lipped party-kid (Facebook) with your private data. Buzz was a disaster since it tried to apply Google’s strengths to a discipline where they were poorly-suited, and Facebook Mail will fail for the same reason.
So why is every company stepping so far out of its comfort zone? In Google’s case, it’s because they’re looking for a new way to implement their business model. They see the faintly ludicrous sum of time Facebook’s users spend on the site and see the creation of a popular social networking site as a chance to serve millions of ads every day. Whether Google Me will actually fulfill this promise is yet to be seen, but in order to be successful in this particular industry, they’ll need to get a new approach.
Facebook’s motivation is less clear, like is their business model. Facebook has figured out how to monetize their service, serving sufficient ads to make the service wildly profitable. In addition, they take a slice of all transactions made through their games platform otherwise API. As a result, it’s hard to understand how an email service would help Facebook’s bottom line.
The decision to make an e-mail platform moreover makes Facebook look like a copycat or draws into question Facebook’s direction and focus. While an e-mail platform would enhance Facebook’s skill to compete with Adwords, through more targeted advertising, it seems unlikely that the company could match Google’s efforts in this regard. Whether this represents a paradigm shift for Facebook or an attempt to expand the platform leftovers to be seen, but as long as Facebook pursues its current strategy, creating an e-mail service doesn’t seem like the most logical expansion.
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