Google vs Facebook

I’ve long though that Facebook would be the winner in the social graph, and that the social graph would be the ultimate winner in how we use the internet.  I was briefly worried when Facebook introduced Apps– it was ahead of it’s time but it cluttered the Facebook experience in a way that turned a lot of people off.  Now facebook Apps are almost entirely relegated to obscure back boxes– as it should be.

But the question is, will Facebook or Google ever be able to outdo the other?

Google added Buzz, but Buzz is a) more of a competitor to Twitter, and b) not being used by anyone.

And Facebook has for a long time allowed people to use regular emails in Facebook Messages, but yet everyone keeps their gMail.

In at least one key metric Facebook (sort of, not really, kind of) was beating Google last week.

For the week ending March 13, the social networking site got more traffic than its competitor in the United States, according to a blog post by industry tracker Hitwise

…

for the first full week, more Americans typed “Facebook.com” into their browser than “Google.com.” But these figures account for only a portion of Google’s web properties. They don’t measure Gmail or YouTube at all. Looked at in isolation, YouTube alone was the fifth most visited website during  the week ending March 6, according to Hitwise

So Google is still king, as it should be.  But Facebook is ascending to the dominant challenger (like, up there with Microsoft and Apple) just like I predicted four years ago.

And this recent news, even if it’s not really “news” has got to be putting some smiles on those Facebook faces.

Comments are closed.