Google is the world’s leading search engine, but being a leader in the search engine world is not enough, Google wants more. What would happen if Google took over Facebook? Many business analysts and bloggers think that it would be really interesting…
What would happen if Google would integrate its existed network of Orkut and Buzz? Together, they would have 400 million users. Facebook has 500 million users. Google’s Buzz was released to compete with Facebook’s growing popularity, but that it failed miserably.
Recently, Google has started something new: Calling via Gmail. It is free in the States and Canada for at least the rest of this year. And calling in other countries is not going to cost you more than 5 cents.
Google is also buying it’s way into social gaming. Right now Facebook is social gaming’s number one platform. Google announced a couple of months ago that it was buying Slide, a start-up that makes apps for social networking, for over $200 million. And, according to news reports, Google took a financial stake recently in Zynga, the company behind popular social media game FarmVille.
So we can assume we’ll soon be “Google gaming”. Social gaming is a big platform. As a matter of fact, 22.7% of the internet users in the USA spent their time on blogs and social networking sites. Comparatively, only 3.7% of the time is spent on a search engine. The social media market is growing and Google would not be Google if they did not have a part in that.
“Given the growth in social networking, Google probably thinks it needs a presence there”, says the managing director of internet research at Citi Investment Research, Mark Mahaney. He points out that Google acquired social-networking site Orkut years ago but that it is unpopular in the US. “They’re looking for new areas of growth that are tangential to what they’re in,” he says.
If we can believe the experts, Google is up to something. This is good news for game developers, because most of the games increase their reach due to their distribution via a Social Network.