One Reason Why Google Fears Facebook
Written on July 28, 2008
Google pays a lot of money to be the default homepage / toolbar / desktop search tool to folks like Dell. Too bad the first thing the proud new Dell owner will do is visit facebook and decide to check both of these boxes since she visits facebook 20 times a day. Poof, there goes all that search revenue from the google homepage search box!
I wonder how long facebook’s been testing shipping this feature. BTW, it only shows up in IE for me so can’t tell if this is flight or IE only feature.
This is going to be fun to watch, especially as crazy cool new ways to make money on the internet are invented.
Filed in: Uncategorized.
maybe for all of dell’s techie customers, true, and maybe for the ones who live in the valley, seattle, boston, austin, new york, etc. for all the rest, though, they’re much more likely to head to myspace, yahoo, google, or maybe even msn, whether or not they make it their homepage.
granted, facebook is definitely the new hotness, especially for people like us. in terms of active users, though, it’s still nowhere near the level of a myspace or a yahoo.
facebook just surpassed myspace in WW AU:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/20/facebook-blows-past-myspace-in-global-visitors-for-may/
caveat: growth is international, but it seems like the growth trend is there and signifcant.
Disagree with your hypothesis. Setting Facebook as your homepage doesn’t uninstall the Google Toolbar nor does it change the search provider in the search box built into IE. So I fail to see how it steals queries from Google.
Google fears Facebook because it actively challenges Google’s mission by creating a “dark Web” of extremely valuable content that can’t be indexed.
Facebook doesn’t ask to change search provider yet, but with the announced live search intergration that will likely change as they look to search queries for $$$$ (btw, fb already has an opensearch plugin for friendsearch). Also, the default homepage search box is pretty big query share driver regardless of browser / toolbar settings.
I think Google fears FB for many reasons besides the two we are discussing. Some others that jump to mind:
Ownership of online identity
Developer engagment on their platform
Social discovery (vs. search / intent discovery)
btw, good to hear from you dare. it has been too long.