Google Buzz takes the fight to Facebook

Computerworld – When the world’s largest internet company decides to spend some of its massive development budget on social networking tools, industry analysts say the likes of Facebook and Twitter better take a long glance over their shoulder.
Google Inc. last week took a powerful swing at such social networking sites by unveiling upgrades to the Gmail e-mail service that make it more of a social networking hub.
Google Buzz, which conducted a week-long rollout of the new tools, aims to help users better find the most important information contained in their flood of social posts, pictures and video.
“We’re giving you tools and techniques that will let you manage your time better,” said Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president of product management. “Increasingly, it’s hard to find value and not let it all just wash over you. We feel this bombardment, this fatigue of dealing with the rush of information.”
Google Buzz is a new tab in Gmail that enables users to connect with each other and pull in information from sites like Twitter, YouTube, Picasa and Flickr. Social updates and posts will appear in users’ Gmail inboxes.
Buzz also is geared to make recommendations posts from people a user might not follow but would likely be of interest to him or her.
Company executives today also unveiled a mobile version of Buzz and disclosed that an enterprise version is in the works.
Analysts say it all comes down to appetite.
Google, while it’s the most powerful company on the Internet, wants its share of the social networking pie. And it’s one heck of a big pie. Facebook alone has about 400 million users while Twitter has more than 45 million.
That, according to Dan Olds, an analyst at the Gabriel Consulting Group, is a lot of eyeballs that Google is now missing.
“Google obviously covets the millions and millions of Facebook and Myspace users and wants to monetize them,” added Olds. “This represents a new market for Google, which up to now has had tools that users would use for particular tasks rather than linger on for extended periods of time. This is a serious bid by Google to use its strengths in other areas – think search, mobility and locality — to support its own social networking hub.”
Google’s move could also be a quick blow to Facebook and Twitter, which have been riding high on the social networking stratosphere. Even though Google Buzz is just out of the starting gate, Google quickly can draw on the “tens of millions” of Gmail users, as well as its own online cache, to quickly build a Buzz following.
“This is Google, the 500-pound gorilla on the internet, getting serious about social networking and leveraging its Gmail service to gain a big foothold. This is very important,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst at the Enderle Group. “This is a control play and it may reduce the number of choices people have over time. Like all large moves, this has the potential to be really good or truly evil. It’s too early to say yet, but it puts a lot of power in Google’s hands, and lots of power in the hands of one company typically doesn’t end well, regardless of who the company is. “
While this can’t be good news for Myspace, which has been slipping rapidly in the social networking rankings, it’s also troublesome news for Facebook and Twitter. And it’s interesting to note that while Buzz will include Twitter feeds, it won’t do the same for Facebook items — at least not at the start.
“I don’t see that Google is offering a social networking killer app that would compel large numbers of users to adopt Buzz,” said Olds. “I don’t see this really hurting Facebook, at least not in the short- to medium-term. Users beget users. Creating a popular social networking site is a hard process to get started. While Google is offering some interesting features, I’m not sure that any of them rise to the I’ve-gotta-have-it level for the vast majority of users.”
However, Olds also was quick to note that if any company is up to the task of building a social networking hub that could rival Facebook, it’s Google.
“One of Google’s great strengths is its ability to support initiatives like Buzz,” he added. “Google is going to have to sweeten the pot with more revolutionary features in order to pull users away from Facebook and Myspace. And I’m sure they’re working on that.”