Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Should Google worry about Facebook?

A common question that has been asked by countless online marketers: "should Google worry about Facebook?" Before I go about spilling my opinion on this topic, I'd like to stretch-out-the-silly-putty on this one and go back to late 2007. According to Jody Nimetz from 'ask-Enquiro.com' in September of 2007, she outline 7 points on why Google should feel threatened by Facebook:
  1. Facebook has experienced a quick rise to the "top" - Facebook is currently the second largest social network on the Web, behind only MySpace in terms of traffic.
  2. Facebook is th emost viral software distribution platform ever
  3. Facebook is addicting
  4. Fasbook has made no secret of the fact that it wants to go public and will likely allow its search box to return keyword-driven results to generate greater online advertising dollars, which would pose a threat to Google
  5. Facebook is not some little startup, many believe Facebook's value to be in the $8-12 billion dollar range
  6. There are nearly  3400 applications on Facebook with about 100 million installs
  7. Microsoft continues to acquire a stake in Facebook

Compare that to recent news from RBC Capital Markets' Analyst, Ross Sandler, shows that Facebook could "eclipse Google in 2011" in terms of unique users growing at an annual rate of 85% vs. Google's 20%. Evidently, more users are using Facebook to browse and link to direct key sites more often than Google! Check our the charts that show Facebook's rise to power:


Source: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/03/18/rbc-analyst-issues-note-on-facebooks-threat-to-google/

So it would seem evident that Facebook is invading on Google's mothership of search advertising and browsing. For myself, I hate to admit that it but I've never been much of a Facebook user and have already begun to fall out of sync with today's online networking tools like twitter. Call me old fashioned but I just can't seem to commit to an online tool when I put my phone to good use everyday talking to close friends! For myself at the least, I'm rooting for Google, because I just can't image the day I use Facebook and social networks to get all my quirky information =P
Posted by at

3 comments:

  1. Brian "Market" NgMarch 19, 2009 at 2:36 PM

    This is quite interesting! Never thought about Google and Facebook being competitors.

    ReplyDelete
  2. bigchuckMarch 19, 2009 at 5:26 PM

    There is one thing important to facebook users, and thats simplicty. Every time there is a change in the format of facebook, people complain at how non-user friendly it is. Adding a whole new search engine function to it, i beleive, will have negative impact on facebook. Currently, the search bar is for events and name searches, but assume u add a "google-like" search engine to it, u will have 2 search bars, and it's sorta messy. Currently it is not very hard to jump from www.facebook.com to www.google.com, so i dunt know how willing the users will be to give up the very familiar and well established google search (google has became a verb for seaching) to facebook.

    However, the only possible threat i see is if, microsoft continues to aquire more stake in Facebook, and at the same time, actualy finishes their purchase of Yahoo. That way they can have facebook outsource its search engine part to yahoo (if no purchase on yahoo is made, than msn.com would do for now)and have a really established search engine instantly...

    In the end, i think google and facebook targets different customer needs and invading into the other side's expertise will be risky and costly....i definitely dont see facebook taking over google by 2010

    ReplyDelete
  3. Victor ChanMarch 22, 2009 at 11:52 PM

    haha great comments all around! I personally agree that I don't think Facebook will overtake Google by 2011 in terms of unique users but then again as a biased user of Google for basically everything, I'd hate to switch myself.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)