The Morning Chew

The Difference Between Facebook’s Family and Google’s Family is Nuclear

As much as I don’t like to use Facebook, I think their services are starting to beat out Google’s counterparts. But I’m not so sure it’s due to the underlying social layer as much as it is the visual continuity between their different services.

If you take a look at how Google has integrated its services (especially through acquisitions), they never seem to fully assimilate into the fundamental social-based Google design that is Gmail. Each service remains like a step child—a part of the family by definition, but easily told apart from the biological kids. Comparing “like” services between Facebook and Google, you can see it for yourself:

The services in order are:

1. Dashboard (Facebook Live Feed vs. iGoogle)
2. Profile (Facebook Profile vs. Google Profile)
3. Messages (Facebook Messages vs. Gmail)
4. Blog (Facebook Notes vs. Blogger)
5. Photos (Facebook Photos vs. Picasa Web Albums)
6. Video (Facebook Videos vs. Youtube)

I used to think it was just a simple toolbar that Google could implement across the top of all their sites to unify them. But I realize now that it’s much more than that. When you go to access any of the Facebook services, you always go to facebook.com and then navigate your way to the desired service. Whereas when you go to access one of the Google services, you generally type in the URL to access said service. So I believe the disconnect not only lies within the unified visual aspect, but the unified domain as well.

Google has too wide a range of separate established products that trying to unify them is implausible. Even Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt seems to realizes this and has gone as far as to leak that Google’s social project is a “component” rather than another “service” that can connect their expanding plethora of services together. The main issue here is that there are already a number of services already live and kicking which accomplish the same thing (i.e. Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth). Unless Google has bigger plans with their implementation of such a service, I don’t see how it can compete with the existing competition.

At this point, it’s too late in the game for Google to establish a social layer that can compete with Facebook. But what they can (and seemingly are) doing is creating a centralized hub for your digital life. If you go to edit your Google Profile “About” page you may notice under the “Links” section that Google has been quietly aggregating your social accounts across the web. For example, this is what mine looks like:

By doing this, Google is effectively creating an internet-wide network that supersedes the existing defined social networks. Google’s focus has extended far beyond it’s own family of applications and services. But to compete with Facebook’s tight knit nuclear family Google needs to not concentrate on a social service, but instead focus on the core product that has gotten them to where they are, search.