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A comment on Google+'s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force it to Open. Parent comment

Re:Google+'s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force... by bobthebee on Sunday July 10, 2011 @11:38AM (#2747928)
True. But to go a level deeper, Facebook is dangerous to Google, because: 1) The competitive advantage of AdSense ($10 billion in annualized revenue) is all about having better user profiles that can translate into better syndicated ads. Facebook will undoubtedly launch a competitor given the hires they have made. 2) The competitive advantage of AdWords ($20 billion in annualized revenue) is mostly about having better search results. Again driven by better user understanding.

Facebook has excellent information on users interests. As opposed to MySpace and Twitter, most of the data on Facebook is not crawlable. It's private data, which means that Google is completely locked out. Even if it was crawlable, the data is not as valuable since Google would have to try to interpret it, while Facebook knows what it really means.

Summary: Facebook is an existential threat to Google's two major lines of business AdSense and AdWords. This is going to be a huge drawn out battle. Sit back and enjoy the show.

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Re:Google+'s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force... by MatthewPhillips on Sunday July 10, 2011 @11:02PM (#2749295)
Adsense revenue is driven by purchase intent. "LA to Chicago flights" is a goldmine for advertisers. "Johnny posts a lot of movie reviews so let's target him a Netflix ad" is nice but it's no where near the same as a direct search with intent to purchase.
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Re:Google+'s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force... by bobthebee on Sunday July 10, 2011 @11:49AM (#2747945)
And my assessment is that the article is wrong. Google+'s goal is absolutely to kill Facebook. With something this important to Google, they want to control it themselves. If not, there is always the chance that Facebook will screw them over at the next opportunity and the battle restarts.
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Re:Google+'s Real Goal is Not to Kill Facebook, but to Force... by bryanlarsen on Sunday July 10, 2011 @01:36PM (#2748149)
I think you're both right. I'm sure they'd prefer to beat Facebook, but they probably consider that a stretch goal. However, forcing Facebook to open up would also be considered a victory, IMO.
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