If Facebook wanted us to be scared of Google, why didn’t they just show us this?
Yesterday Facebook was caught out using underhand tactics to pitch major bloggers and the press against Google. Facebook accused Google of “scraping and mining social sites ” for information about millions of users.
But did they have a point?
You might not know it but Google has been building a personal index of your social networking connections that is so detailed it even knows who your friends are friends with.
Facebook’s accusations centre on Google’s Social Connections and Search site which indexes each users’ connections to friends across Google’s services such as Gmail, Buzz, Google Profiles and the web. Even if you don’t have a Google account but do have a social networking account you can appear on a user’s index of connections.
If you have a Google Account, including a Gmail account, you can see Google’s index of your online social circle by visiting http://www.google.com/s2/u/0/search/social. You will need to be logged into your Google Account to view the index.
Google’s index of your contacts lists your connections in three ways.
- Direct connections from Google Chat and Contacts
This list is created from your Gmail Chat, Google Reader and Contacts list. - Direct connections from links through Google Profiles or Connected accounts
This list is created from sites you link to on your Google Profile account. If you don’t have a Google Profile but have connected your Twitter profile to your Buzz account then Google indexes your Twitter followers here. - Secondary Connections
This list contains the names of users who are connected to any of the people linked to in the first two lists (i.e friends of friends).
The lists also shows the sites, such as Twitter or GoodReads, that connects users to each other.
Why does Google collect this information?
Google uses this information to customise search results for users, which it says “helps you discover relevant content from your social connections…[which] is sometimes more relevant and meaningful to you than content from any random person.”
Is this an invasion of privacy?
Probably not; the information here is publically available and in many cases comes from information you give to Google through their social sites (Buzz, Google Profile etc). What this index does, that is perhaps borderline, is make it easy to find information, you might not have otherwise come across, about someone.
For example I follow Felicia Day on Twitter and according to the information in my social connections index she has a GoodReads account, which I didn’t know. This information is in the public domain, if I wished I could have found her GoodReads account by doing a simple search.
But now I don’t have to, Google lists the information for me.
However, what is concerning is that Google’s index also connects me to over 320 people who are friends or followers of Felicia Day. I have never contacted nor met any of these people.
So what?
It is certainly a shock seeing the huge amount of information Google can collect about each user through just a few links. According to my index I am connected to over 1800 people through my Google and social networking profiles.
Google is not doing anything underhanded by creating this index, after all it is a search engine (although Facebook accused it of violating several sites’ Terms of Service agreements). But displaying this information in this way raises some questions about user privacy -not least, what exactly is private on the public social web?
I don’t when will facebook stop this ugly strategy. It reveals an element that many analysts explain currently who proves that facebook truly knows that the competition with Google is already lost ! Facebook will never be an essential element of the web landscape. The social network is still surfing on a trend wave and will never be useful like Google can be. Moreover, the firm knows that new social networks (like Outlyf.com especially) can be more useful and could sweep facebook very quickly. That”s why Facebook uses this strategy but it s not good for the image of the website… bye bye facebook
I don’t when will facebook stop this ugly strategy. It reveals an element that many analysts explain currently who proves that facebook truly knows that the competition with Google is already lost ! Facebook will never be an essential element of the web landscape. The social network is still surfing on a trend wave and will never be useful like Google can be. Moreover, the firm knows that new social networks (like Outlyf.com especially) can be more useful and could sweep facebook very quickly. That”s why Facebook uses this strategy but it s not good for the image of the website… bye bye facebook
@AxelleBlackmar Techchrunch made a good point in saying that no one could accuse Google of being cowardly when confronting its competition, eg its Bing Sting (http://bit.ly/iYi5pY). The problem is that Facebook had a point, it just made it so badly.
It will be interesting to see the longterm lifespan of the social web, I could easily imagine that the next generation of social web users will not want to be on the same social networking sites as their parents. And this is the logic Google in employing as it creates its social layer. By providing other products to users of its essential services, such as Gmail, Google has a greater chance of keeping users than a social entertainment form such as Facebook.
@AxelleBlackmar Techchrunch made a good point in saying that no one could accuse Google of being cowardly when confronting its competition, eg its Bing Sting (http://bit.ly/iYi5pY). The problem is that Facebook had a point, it just made it so badly.
It will be interesting to see the longterm lifespan of the social web, I could easily imagine that the next generation of social web users will not want to be on the same social networking sites as their parents. And this is the logic Google in employing as it creates its social layer. By providing other products to users of its essential services, such as Gmail, Google has a greater chance of keeping users than a social entertainment form such as Facebook.
I personally do not mind this, in fact it just google providing something Facebook would love to provide but does not have the technical know how and or resources and agreements in place to do so.
The only reason Facebook tried to set up this sting was try and slow down or stop google from launching it social tools in the near and Facebook failed in that completly. In fact I am pretty sure Social circle which is a hidden feature have got a lot more people looking and using it over the last couple of days.
In fact given the timing I pretty sure this sting operation by Facebook was design to sabotage any social launch at Google I/0, of cause there was no such announcement, so it damage Facebook a lot more than it damage Google.
I look forward to see where google goes with this powerful tool in the future.
I personally do not mind this, in fact it just google providing something Facebook would love to provide but does not have the technical know how and or resources and agreements in place to do so.
The only reason Facebook tried to set up this sting was try and slow down or stop google from launching it social tools in the near and Facebook failed in that completly. In fact I am pretty sure Social circle which is a hidden feature have got a lot more people looking and using it over the last couple of days.
In fact given the timing I pretty sure this sting operation by Facebook was design to sabotage any social launch at Google I/0, of cause there was no such announcement, so it damage Facebook a lot more than it damage Google.
I look forward to see where google goes with this powerful tool in the future.
[…] steadily becoming more evident and will continue to be beneficial to more websites in the future.The Google+1 feature is an innovation by Google that focuses on sharing website content and recommen…based on recommendations or +1 from your contacts. It can be compared to its predecessor – Google […]