.... and then Google+ entered

Google.com is one of the hottest properties on the internet, and that has enabled the search giant to get to where it is. Several years passed since 1998 ( when Google was launched ), and then in 2005, Zuck launched Facebook. Gradually the engagement factor of Facebook became a force to reckon with. 

Google’s business model was to provide adverts highly specific to the search query, and it has been a grand success for them so far. One potential pro / con of this approach was the fact that the results were independent of who searched for the results. However, in real life, this is not the case. This is because the same search query can mean multiple things to different people. Google searches, while being highly relevant, were completely devoid of this calculation, and yet it all worked out great for Google…

Then Facebook entered, and with it the user specified a myriad number of their personal preferences, and choices, and likes and dislikes. All of this information was subsequently available to Facebook, and to the other third-party vendors who dealt with Facebook as well. The difference in the level of targeting that Google could provide, versus what Facebook could provide was astounding… This is because Facebook could not only take into account what the user was searching for, but also use a plethora of information about user’s likes, dislikes etc. and then subsequently present advertisements which were relevant not just from the search query POV, but also from the user’s POV…

I believe that Google did not anticipate an attack on their core business from this attack vector, and were complacent initially. Finally Google decided that social was an important angle to the whole targeted advertisement business, and tried to enter the social space. After a few ‘failed’ social experiments ( Orkut, Buzz ), Google finally launched Google+, and also updated it’s privacy policy to more broadly integrate user’s interactions across different Google properties. With this change, Google encourages users to log-in and stay logged-in across the different Google product offerings, and also enables Google to learn more about the logged-in user. Slowly, but surely, Google is on it’s way to building a solid social graph…