Silicon Roundabout

Google Needs to Stop With the Social — Now

Chuck Ansbacher | Thursday 31 March, 2011 14:45

Google. You all know what it is and does — introductions are not needed. But are you equally familiar with Orkut? I sure am not. It’s some social network Google introduced a while ago… if you click on the “more” tab in your Gmail, and then click on the “even more” option under it, you can find Orkut. I have no idea what it does — in Google’s words it’s something to “meet new people and stay in touch with friends.” What a novel idea.

Orkut, probably due to it’s angular and unappealing name, never made a splash (I hear it’s popular in Brazil — honestly). Neither, a few years later, did something Google very poorly rolled out called Buzz. Remember Buzz? Probably the most bungled product Google ever introcuded that for all I know may not even exist anymore since I disabled it after one hour when Google let every person I’d ever emailed know way too much about me by accident? Yeah, that didn’t go too well for Google either.

But like Microsoft before it, Google seems ill content to stick with what it does best, and let its competitors do the same. Granted, Google has managed to do a lot of things well, but at this point its safe to say that “social” has been their one stumbling block — possibly because Facebook is already so damn good at it.

But also just like Microsoft before it, Google isn’t going to stop trying and trying. Today, they continue that miserable trend with the “+1” button — an apparent competitor with the Facebook “like” button. Great.

This button will nestle right in with the dozen or so other buttons (I’ve seen websites with 300+ buttons next to the “share” section — not kidding) already crowding up pages. Now, in addition to being able to like, tweet, reddit, fark, stumble upon, digg, etc. a thing on the internet, you’ll also be able to “+1” it. Thank you Google for filling this void!

Rumors abound that Google is working on yet another full on Facebook challenger, and this first little toe dangle precedes a much larger impending splash. With Facebook getting about 900 billion page views a month, it’s not hard to see why this territory is so enticing. As the internet has proved time and time again, there is always room for competition, and holding on to the top spot forever is very hard to do, if not impossible. But as Google’s social blunders have piled up over the years, it seems fair to assume that when Facebook’s eventual challenger does inevitably emerge, it won’t come from a company whose name rhymes with Lougle.

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