Fortune Magazine: Google And Facebook Fight For Dominance In The Internet Field

"Fortune" magazine published an article on the Internet today.

The following is the abstract:

Paul Adams (Paul Adams) is one of the most sought after technological talents in Silicon Valley. He is a talented product designer, wearing square glasses, with a strong Irish accent and passion for technology.

As a major social networking researcher at Google, Paul helped create the great idea behind Google Google+: the circles function of Google+, allowing users to group friends easily according to group names, such as real friends (real friends) or college students (college buddies).

Facebook hired Adams in December last year to help companies design social advertising.

Adams said in his personal blog: "what Google values is technology, not social science."

In technology

They will do everything possible to attract talented people like Adams to attract their attention or fight for advertising revenue.

The two sides have invested huge stakes. The two companies are competing for the lead in the future network field, and the final result will affect our way of getting information, communicating, buying or selling goods.

One of the belligerent sides is Facebook, the uncrowned king of the social networking field. It is trying to consolidate its position as a hegemony of social networks.

The other side is Google, which organizes information from all over the world and shows people the way to get information.

Larry Page, Google co-founder, has been the chief executive of the company since April of this year. Page is 11 years older than Facebook Mark CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg), and two people belong to different Internet age with a totally different world view.

In page's network, everything starts with search.

Users search for news, buy a pair of shoes, or keep a close eye on celebrities they like.

If you want to know about the medical conditions or decide which TV to buy, you will search.

In that world, Google's search algorithm, which has been trained for more than ten years, is almost perfect for users' questions.

But in recent years, this network is gradually tilting towards Zuckerberg's world, which may be ruthless.

But instead of searching for a piece of news, users are waiting for friends to tell you what kind of information you want to read.

Friends will tell you what kind of movies they like, what brands they like, and where they eat Japanese sushi.

Facebook is in the center of this new world.

Most people start their life online in recent days.

Facebook has extended its own antennae across the network and allows others to tap your friends network.

Thousands of websites and applications have basically become satellites that revolve around the Facebook orbit.

Users can now log on to the shop store commentary website Yelp, understand the Facebook friends' evaluation of the new cafes in the street, or visit the streaming music service provider Spotify, let friends choose music tracks for you, or play the Zynga games of social game developers with your friends.

For page, what is even worse is that most social activities can not be viewed through Google's network controlled search algorithm, so day after day, Google's search becomes less precise and relevant.

For businesses and consumers, changing to a more socialized network has changed everything.

The first affected industries include advertising.

Google may have a 41% share of the AOL advertising market, which now has a market size of $31 billion, and Google has the majority of its market share in the search advertising market.

But the growth of search advertising market has slowed down, and advertisers have invested limited funds in Facebook.

Facebook has 800 million users, many of whom stay on Facebook longer than others.

Facebook shows that advertising revenue is expected to grow by 81% this year, and Google's advertising growth is expected to be 34%.

Both Google and Facebook want users to believe that the market has enough space to push the two companies forward and achieve unlimited success.

But don't be silly.

"If Google or Facebook can get billions of dollars in revenue growth in the display advertising market, it is unlikely that Google or Facebook will gain growth in the display advertising market," said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, a rating agency.

Like Bill Gates (Bill Gates) more than 10 years ago, page realized that the company's grip on the technology world was getting weaker.

Page hopes that through unremitting efforts in order to get part of the social network share of the market, to fight back.

Page's first substantive move as Google's new CEO is to use a lot of resources and engineers to challenge Facebook by issuing Google+.

This is not the first time Google has set foot in the social sphere.

But unlike before, Google's launch of Google+ has not been cynical in the industry. Google said that the launch of Google+ was only 4 months, and its registered users had reached 40 million.

Zuckerberg is clear that since Facebook has exceeded MySpace and become the world's largest social networking site, Google+ has become the first real threat that Facebook needs to face.

(Facebook faces more risks: any event that undermines its social network dominance will hit Facebook's much anticipated initial public offering, and Facebook's IPO value is as high as $80 billion).

Shortly after the launch of Google+, Zuckerberg hung a pink neon lamp on his headquarters. It was written on alert. Employees were notified that they wanted to work overtime and copy some of the commendable functions of Google+.

But defensive measures are not Zuckerberg's style. Zuckerberg launched a large number of new functions at the F8 Developers Conference held in September this year to improve the existing services quickly.

The market predicts that Facebook will eventually launch an advertising network to use all social activities to help advertisers better lock users in the entire network.

If deployed properly, this will further threaten Google's status as the king of online advertising.

So when most of us are wandering around Gmail accounts or Facebook's newsfeeds, there is a war in the core of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco.

Every weekend this summer, Zuckerberg provided free food for employees willing to work overtime.

Page is urging its development team to quickly add new features to Google+ (which has added more than 100 new functions in the first 90 days).

The decisions that companies make now (the launch of products and the broadcasting of advertisements) will decide which companies will win the final.

Google

Page is not satisfied.

It was a weekend in spring last year, and page was playing with the original prototype Google+ on Android phone.

Page found that Google+ had difficulty publishing the photos he had just taken, so he complained to Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of social networking.

He agreed to explain the decision of the Google+ team. Page insisted on clicking a click to upload the picture.

In Google, page can be said to be one.

He asked his team to redesign the function of image uploading. Page now appreciates this function.

In recent days, page describes how convenient it is to send pictures from Android to Google+. "This is totally a magical experience," he said.

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In many ways, Google+ is page's social network.

The earlier use of Google+ made page the most popular in Google+.

He has been closely involved in this project since the beginning.

In the first few months, page had weekly product reviews every Friday at 11 a.m.

In order to keep an eye on progress, page moved his office and many executive offices to the Google+ team's building.

Page invested a lot of resources in the project, making Google+ the largest project in the company's 13 history.

Paige also promoted the company's senior vice president and reported directly to him.

Page also linked part of the company's bonus to the company's performance in the social sphere.

Page plans to pform Google into a more flexible and responsible company. Google+ is also the first attempt at page's plan. Google is taking steps to avoid being trapped in the plight and lack of functionality of many successful companies.

In the Google+ project, Google abandoned the way of doing what one likes and sometimes innovates without any rules. Instead, it has a more rigorous style of organization and management.

Segi Brin, another Sergey co-founder of Google, said that allowing a hundred flowers to bloom may still be important for Google, Google.

But once they are open, you want to sort it into a coherent bouquet.

Perhaps Google's social ambitions need some discipline. Google's strategy for Facebook social networking services is facing difficulties: Google's first social networking Orkut, like Facebook, was launched in 2004, but Orkut has no outstanding performance outside Brazil.

In 2007, Google summoned MySpace and other social networks to establish an Open Social alliance to balance the influence of Facebook, but ended in failure.

2 years later, Google launched the Wave service, but shut down the service in a few months. Google launched the Buzz service in 2010. This is also a social network pushed by Google to Gmail users. Buzz has been criticized soon: Buzz exposes the federated information of Gmail to others, and has led to the investigation of the US Federal Trade Commission (Federal), forcing Google to modify its privacy policy, and accepting the federal government's supervision over its services in the next 20 years.

The Buzz defeat has sounded the alarm for Google, and some of Google's best engineers have come to realize that social networking has posed an important threat to Google.

As the Internet is rebuilt around the user, especially around the Facebook's human relations map, Google may end up watching it, its relevance is decreasing with the day.

This information has made Google management panic. An ambitious project known as Emerald Sea is fast prototyping.

The project will not only create a competitive product for Facebook, but also pform Google's existing product lines around social media.

After more than a year of deliberation, Google finally launched Google+ services in June this year.

As a result, Google+ has cloned a large number of functions that users enjoy, and has removed the user's annoying function in Facebook Facebook.

Users can find familiar home pages and data pages, picture labels and games in Google+, and, of course, include a steady stream of information updates from friends.

The +1 button of Google is similar to the Like button of Facebook.

Facebook has arbitrarily trampled on users' privacy choices, which has always been blamed by Facebook.

Google+ allows users to easily decide who can see the information he posted on the article.

Facebook lacks a good way to distinguish colleagues from classmates and real friends, so Google builds Google+ around Circles. Circles is a way to intuitively group large numbers of users.

For developers such as Zynga who are developing applications for Facebook platforms, Facebook charges 30% of its revenue, and Google+ now receives only 5% of its revenue sharing.

Since its launch, Google+ has launched more than 100 new functions. Page said that Google+ will also launch a large number of new functions.

In Silicon Valley, everyone thought Google would not beat Facebook, but Google+ surprised everyone, including fans of Facebook.

"Google+ is impressive," said Zuckerberg, a Harvard student and founder of Causes Joe (Joe Green).

Facebook

Until recently, Zuckerberg, the most popular person on Google+, had 598 thousand fans on Google+ and the number is increasing.

But Zuckerberg did not publish the information publicly in Google+. Obviously, he does not want to discuss Google+ now.

But at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Odo Alto, more than 750 engineers often pass through the company's small glass conference room. (Palo)

During this summer's vigilance, employees of Facebook have been working overtime for Google's Google+ service.

This situation has only happened once in Facebook in recent years: in the summer of 2011, after market rumors that Google began to develop Facebook killer, Zuckerberg summoned engineers for 60 consecutive days, working day and night, regardless of weekends, to modify key social functions such as pictures, groups and activities.

As at that time, this summer, Facebook cafeteria is open in the evenings and weekends. The children of their employees can go to dinner and have a good night's hug with their parents before their parents work late into the night.

By September this year, Facebook has released a lot of new features like better group tools to respond to the Google+ circles function.

A member of the Facebook product and engineering team said, "Google can invest a lot of money and hundreds of developers, which is very serious, and we should take it seriously."

Anxiety is not a simple way to create a good product.

In May, Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller, a public relations company, to publish anti Google articles in newspapers and blogs. When the media found that Facebook was Burson's client, this foolish move made Facebook burn the candle.

Facebook argues that Google is worried about its violation of privacy policy, but its erroneous judgment has led to media criticism.

Of course, ironically, Facebook and Google are constantly facing the accusation that they do not respect users' privacy while making use of user information as much as possible for advertisers.

When we like a pair of shoes on (like) footwear retailer Zappos, or to upgrade our status in the light of future marriage plans, all the social information we injected into Facebook helps Facebook to provide advertisements that we are more likely to like.

This makes

Zuckerberg is trying to find out how to share more information with his Facebook friends in order to collect more data by spending more time on more users.

At the F8 conference held in September this year, Zuckerberg introduced time line functions to replace Facebook's increasingly outdated data pages.

Zuckerberg said, "imagine the story of your life."

In order to verify, he showed his Facebook timeline. A vertical line rolled back, displaying his personal history continuously, displaying all the information he had published in Facebook, listing the most important information, and encouraging him to add information and pictures to the information released in May 14, 1984: born in the Dobbs Ferry area of New York.

Zuckerberg wants to use this to make Facebook a digital cut for life.

Just imagine, users upload pictures of Facebook decades ago.

But the bold move at the F8 conference is not Zuckerberg's vanity but deep social integration with other services such as Netflix and Spotify.

Registered Spotify, new users now need to use their Facebook information. The advantage is that users can find and listen to their friends' music lists on Spotify or directly on Facebook. The disadvantage is that your music tastes will be made public.

As time goes on, new social data streams may prove to be priceless.

Until now, although many web publishers offer users the option to publish activities (the articles they read, the shoes they buy), most users skip this option.

In the new mode, sharing will become a opt-out option rather than a opt-in option.

Facebook may eventually use the data to sell more targeted advertisements on the website or elsewhere.

Once Google AdWords and AdSense become practical tools to help advertisers cover a large number of users, these users know what they are looking for, and social advertising will become a tool to help users discover new things.

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War

At the end of October this year, technology bloggers began to stir up the latest news on social networking: Zuckerberg is no longer the most popular user of Google+.

Who surpassed him? Apart from page.

The news may be insignificant, but the news will undoubtedly make Google headquarters smile.

Neither Google nor Facebook likes to talk about competition between the two sides (neither of the two companies' CEO is willing to be interviewed on this matter), but the competition between the two sides is becoming increasingly fierce on many fronts, even if it is a small victory, any party will be cheered by it.

There is no more competitive field than talent competition.

Leaving an engineer or executive of a company can easily be received by another company.

Competition in this field is completely one-sided.

Take stock of Facebook employees, from top management of the company to the lowest level of interns, and you will often see a former Google employee like Adams.

Of the top 11 executives of Facebook, four came from Google, including Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of the company, and David Fischer, the company's advertising and operations director, Shirley (Sheryl).

These figures can not indicate all the competition between the two sides. The competition between the two sides can be traced back to 2007. Since then, the competition between the two sides has become increasingly fierce.

Facebook's weapon? Facebook is considered to be the most popular company in Silicon Valley. When the company finally goes public, it has the potential to breed millionaires.

Google fought back with real gold and silver.

In a few cases, Google executives offered more than $10 million in stock and cash in order to retain top engineers and executives, according to a senior executive who participated directly in the talent war.

The news spread quickly, and many Google employees followed suit: they received the invitation from Facebook to get a big raise in Google.

A recent executive who left Google said: "this creates a non Google environment.

They like to be treated with preference. "

So in January of this year, Google tried a new way: the company raised the salaries of all the employees by 10%, and converted a large part of the bonus to the basic salary. Many employees' salaries increased by 15% or even 20%.

If Google is taking defensive measures in the talent war, then Google attracts big customers' attention.

Google's most powerful weapon is its position as a huge Internet Co.

For example, after 90 days of testing, Google opened Google+ to the public in September this year. Google launched a special promotion campaign, which even made some big brands greedy. On Google's main page, a large blue arrow pointed to Google+ tags with tens of millions of users per day.

Google+ traffic is rising rapidly. In addition to its main page, Google also plans to face tens of millions of uses.

Users of Gmail, Maps and YouTube promote Google+ and integrate it into millions of Android cell phone products.

Dick Costolo, chief executive of Twitter, said: "there is no doubt that they will pull a large number of users." Dick said.

Usually, Google's ability to influence these users is the biggest concern for Facebook.

Over the years, Facebook executives have been saying that under fair competition, they are confident that they will beat Google.

But what they are afraid of is that Google uses its influence to promote Google+, just as Microsoft did in the early days, which is not fair.

Some strategies, such as promotion on the homepage, are effective and have not been controversial.

Google has the ability to use its search engine to promote Google+ and make it in front of other social services. Such other ways may lead to more problems.

Google has not adopted this way to promote Google+ at present, but Google has adopted this strategy in other services, such as Google map service, which also makes Google competitors complain frequently.

Since Google is facing an anti-monopoly investigation by the US federal government, it may think twice when taking such measures.

As mobile becomes the next main battleground, Google may find many ways to build Google+'s many functions for Android phones and tablet computers, so that competitors can hardly compete with them.

The last item has no effect on Zuckerberg.

It has prompted Zuckerberg to seek a close relationship with Google, Apple's biggest competitor in the mobile world.

The source pointed out that the two companies had already held rounds of consultations.

But the two companies have yet to find an attractive way of cooperation. Perhaps this is why the two companies have encountered many frustrations at the beginning of their cooperation.

Apple tried to connect the new social networking Ping to iTunes with Facebook last year, but was rejected by Facebook. It was reported that Facebook refused because of technical reasons.

This is also a rare public accusation against apple.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, called on some reporters to express his dissatisfaction with Steve.

Apple chose to integrate Twitter services in its recently released mobile operating system instead of Facebook, which is also not helpful to the cooperation between the two sides.

Facebook and apple are still negotiating. The two companies fully understand that building an alliance between them can help them resist the common enemy.

We know, you may think, if this is a war, who will win the final? The answer is not simple.

Google has two main goals for social media: one is to slow down the power of Facebook; the other is to use data obtained from Google+ to improve services such as search, map and advertising.

Both Paige and don do think that the latter goal is the most important.

"We can make the search better, we can make YouTube and Gmail more excellent," he said. "We can make our ads more relevant."

"Google+ will involve all aspects of Google products," he said later.

In order to achieve this goal, Google does not need to surpass Facebook, but it needs to become a well deserved industry second.

There are some deviations from Avis, a car rental company that is Facebook's car rental company Hertz.

Danny Engine, editor of search engine technology website Search Engine Land, said: "at present, it is more like Thrifty Car Rental in the car rental industry."

To achieve this goal, Google needs to drink more Kool-Aid beverages than before.

Look at this news: a technology blog reported in October this year that many Google executives, even Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt (Eric Schmidt), did not register their own Google+ accounts.

A few days later, Schmidt's account appeared on the website quietly.

Google also needs other efforts: a valuable proposal is to be different from Facebook, forcing a large number of users to switch to Google+, or at least two websites are more active.

It is not clear how many of the 40 million users who own Google+ accounts are actually using Google+.

Of course, Google will not disclose this information.

When asked why users should switch to Google+, Google executives will say again and again that the online sharing function has been destroyed.

With Circles, Google users can share with real life.

For Facebook, the early success of Google+ means that Zuckerberg can't screw up.

In the past, Facebook's product failures and privacy policy disorder were basically understandable and forgotten.

From now on, Google+ is waiting, waiting for any dissatisfied Facebook user, let alone their friends.

In other words, while Zuckerberg continues to work hard, he must now be vigilant against page and his team.

Yes, Zuckerberg may feel well ahead of the number of users, and Facebook has picked more than 10 talents from Google.

But page did not have any problems in injecting blood into Google.

In the last quarter, Google has increased nearly 2600 employees, almost as many as Facebook workers. Google employees have a clear task: turning Google into a super giant in social networking.