back to article Schmidt preaches 'deep integration' desire with Facebook, Twitter

Google chairman Eric Schmidt reckons that Mountain View's decision to keep invites to its latest social network to a minimum is already starting to pay off for the company. It announced Google+ last week, when it began a limited "field test" that was clearly done to make the project more desirable among the happy-clappy Web2.0 …

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  1. DJ 2
    Thumb Down

    But one of the reasons wave died.

    was that it was impossible to get normal people to try it, because you couldn't invite. By the time that invites were available people weren't hearing about it in the news.

    1. Jerome 0
      Thumb Up

      Re: But one of the reasons wave died.

      And those of us with patient friends are now happily using Wave, and praying that Google don't pull the plug on the servers any time soon.

  2. petur
    Boffin

    Compared...

    Apart from the fact that I still don't see the point in Facebook or Google+, I think Google+ has at least two big advantages:

    - your data is only used for their own ad displaying algorithms, not sold to several 3rd parties

    - your data is open and freely available to download - same as they offer for gmail/docs/...

    Since I assume that whatever I put online can be viewed by anybody, I do not care that much about using it for targeting ads.

    Free and open data is much more important, at least to me. The data is mine, you have no right to keep it for yourself if I wish to go elsewhere....

    1. Rams
      WTF?

      Know what you are talking about

      Apart from the fact that I don't care about knitting, I think the cross stitch is great, but not as cool the stitched knit.

      Try to use facebook one time, you might learn a few things.

      1/ You can download all of your data in account parameters, download your data.

      2/ Whatever I put on facebook is not accessible to anybody, if you do not use lists of friends or confidentiality parameters it is your own problem.

      Schmidt is more than scary, and ou are praising to give more information. Read 1984, please do.

      1. MikeSM
        Thumb Down

        DO know what you are talking about

        I didn't read petur's post as praising anything.

        Facebook has finally allowed users to download account data, albeit in a difficult and non-reusable way. Additionally there is a waiting period of at least 24 hours before it can be downloaded.

        You data is NOT deleted after you close your facebook account. It is retained indefinitely "should you ever choose to come back".

        And despite how strict you set your privacy settings, your data can still be leaked through your friends' ignorance - unless you completely disable the Facebook apps platform. A trusted friend can authorize an app to hoover information about their friends (read: YOU). Disabling the Facebook app platform severely cripples the site's functionality and prevents you from accessing the site from mobile apps, uploading pictures from your mobile's camera app, etc.

        Bottom line: Zuck and Schmidt are both hypocritical nutjobs. They can shove their social networks up their respective asses.

  3. Atonnis

    Of COURSE he wants integration...

    ...because as far as Shit...err..Schmidt is concerned, integration means data they can harvest and put on their own servers.

    I don't particularly like Facebook, and detest Zuckerberg, but I really hope they aren't suckered into opening up peoples' private information to the scum that is Google in the name of 'openness' and 'integration'.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Embrace, extend

    Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    War?

    > "But it's not all-out war yet."

    I wouldn't be so sure of that. Looks like a Google v Microsoft 'war' to me. Whether or not it's a true 'war', I doubt it. Microsoft and Google are both US companies and between them they own a hell of a lot of online real estate. For all we know they have the same major shareholders.

    Remember Microsoft invested $240Million dollars into Facebook about four years ago, they bought Skype and have a deal with Nokia. Also, Facebook is making deals with major traditional TV broadcasters, including having live streaming content.

  6. Inventor of the Marmite Laser Silver badge

    happy-clappy Web2.0 crowd.

    Ah yes. Give them somewhere to play and they'll be out of the way of real people.

    1. ArmanX

      Wait...

      Aren't we on Web 3.0 now? Surely the rabble won't be content with anything less than 3.0...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    No facebook integration please

    If Google+ goes for "deep integration" with Facebook, that probably lead to Facebook copying your data and claiming it as their own... this would not be a good thing.

    Please keep Facebook out of Google+

  8. NoneSuch Silver badge

    The Twinkie Analogy

    Mr. Schmidt wants integration like shoving a drinking straw in a Twinkie. Then Google can suck out the creamy goodness inside and leave an empty husk behind. Same strategy as M$, Facebook, Apple and a dozen others.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    love to have deeper integration with Twitter and Facebook

    If they individually arn't scary enough, privacy wise, i'd hate to think what they'd conjour up together.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Integration Euphemism

    In this case I perceive "integration" to be very similar to "penetration". I don't get how in this day and age of rampant identity theft that so many organizations and people are keen on publishing personal details and "integrating" them with other organizations/people. Remember that when you integrate with someone you're integrating with everyone that they've ever integrated with.

  11. SilverWave
    Go

    I get to call a register hack "Naive" OMG! Made my day :-)

    >But it's not all-out war yet.

    Oh yes there are - Death Match.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Can we have a Reg survey?

    How about a survey asking all reg readers what they think of these social web sites.

    I have a feeling that the vast majority are IT types and as such have a sensible reluctence to giving away thier privicy to a bunch of corperates with the combined respect for their users as you could expect from New International.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Headmaster

      Reg survey

      I have a feeling that the vast majority are IT types and as such have a sensible reluctence {reluctance} to giving away thier {their} privicy {privacy} to a bunch of corperates {corporates} with the combined respect for their users as you could expect from New International.

      My goodness, the speeling!

  13. JDX Gold badge

    re: survey

    The vast majority of IT types are not anti-Google or even anti-Facebook. Just the vast majority of those who bother to write a comment every time a story related to either is written.

    If you make assumptions about IT demographics based on Reg comments, the majority of IT people use Linux and Scroogle. They don't. Even most programmers are on Windows.

  14. Justin Clements
    FAIL

    Deluded

    >>Schmidt told the likes of Reuters and the Wall Street Journal that there was plenty of room for other social networks alongside Google+ to wiggle around in online.

    Deluded as ever. There is room for one social network and that's it.

    Those of us that use Facebook regularly don't have have unlimited energy or attention to run several social networks because some friends are on Facebook and some friends are on Google+.

    No matter how many Gmail accounts Google uses to pad out their social network, the use (eg what my friends are up etc) won't be on Google+, it'll still be on Facebook.

    Any of my friends that decamp to Google+ will find it a lonely place.

    1. henchan

      it's about the people not the network

      I am not really a user of any social network, so it is possible that i don't well understand the field. Nevertheless, I wanted to point out that your post makes assumptions which, though perhaps true right now, likely won't hold for long.

      If the majority of people basically assume that the data in their network of choice belongs to themselves (and I believe that is the case), then the owners of those networks sooner or later will have to open up access or lose market share. There is no corner that they'll be able to hide in. With suitable software, any client of one network may act as a bridge to the other networks - within the scope of the data that user owns. This is equivalent to the analogue problem faced by DRM. Ultimately, the data must be rendered to its owner. And at that point it can be manipulated at the owner's convenience. Client-side adaptors may be messy, inconvenient and subject to cat-and-mouse games now, but they can and will erode any business model bent on excluding data owners from using their own stuff however they want to.

  15. IGnatius T Foobar
    Megaphone

    I hope there is a mass migration to Google+

    I'm so sick of the Facebook slobberfest and I hope there is a mass migration to Google+ in the very near future. Facebook are scumbags.

  16. Greg 10

    Room for everyone

    @Justin Clements

    Of course Schmidt is right.

    There is room for hundreds of social networks, not just one.

    First, there are lots of thriving small networks, specialized ones, who integrate with facebook. there is even room for at least two other large ones (LinkedIn, Twitter).

    Second, Schmidt says he wants to integrate deeply with FB, Twitter. When he says there is room for lots of social networks, he presumably means "assuming we can force competition-friendly interoperability".

    There is room for several phone operators no? In spite of the fact that obviously, phone is the biggest network effect in the world.

    Now if the first big phone company had only accepted called passed to and from its own network, there would be space for only one phone company in the world.

    But you can actually pass call to (and receive calls from) people suscribing to other phone companies, and it's illegal for phone companies to not allow this.

    Hence, there is room for at least as many social networks in the world as there are phone companies (much more, actually, because of lower sunk and fixed costs).

    You just need to have interoperability rules, and that's clearly what Schmidt wants the future to be: interoperability with FB, Twitter, and probably anyone else.

    And if Google manages to obtain that, then hundreds of (small) networks will flourish in its wake: to each his preferred way of seeing and pushing content, but content goes to people you want, regardless of where those people actually choose to see that content and push their own.

    (and BTW, yes, it'll be hard as hell that interoperability, but certainly wayyyyy simpler than the technical interoperability between phone carriers)

    1. Justin Clements

      Beg to disagree

      >>There is room for several phone operators no? In spite of the fact that obviously, phone is the biggest network effect in the world.

      There is only room for several phone operators because a call can be passed from one network to another.

      If there was one major telecom company, and they refused terminate calls on another network, which telecom provider would you choose? The one where you can talk to your friends and family, or the network with no other subscribers? You will of course use the one with your friends on it.

      (The above example can be demonstrated in the late 90s with SMS. It wasn't until the interconnects became available that SMS finally took off. Until then you could only text within the network.)

      However, I digress.

      My point is very simple. If your friends are not on a social network with you, then the social network has no value to you. You cannot be social if you are on your own, or if there is no traffic.

      Google+ will fail because they will never reach the critical mass they need for users like me to move over to them. My friends are all on Facebook, and Facebook still scratches the itch of being able to keep up with friends; Google+ does not make me and my friends any more social.

      The only positive thing that other people can seem to come up with is the new group feature, so they can post updates only to specific friends.

      If that is the case, don't invite your mum as a friend on Facebook. If your home life is too embarrassing for your work colleagues, don't post it up, or don't invite colleagues as friends. Etc.

      However, these are features that could easily be replicated in Facebook in a very short space of time. So whatever benefits Google+ has right now, could easily be in place on Facebook in 6 months.

      1. 5.antiago

        Interesting, but

        Interesting points here, but I would add that I know a few people who aren't on FB. For these people, I've either got their email address (stored in my Gmail contacts), or I've got their mobile number (stored in my Android phone).

        Facebook has a closed email system and it doesn't make my phone's OS, so it can't be as flexible as Google can be. Potentially, Google+ might take off because it's part of this wider platform, a platform that could organise all of my contacts in a much more effective way.

        As an aside, I think Google is looking to be at the centre of connecting people, the one-stop shop where you click a person's name and you get the choice to ring, text, email or PM; communication that is device-independent. And I think Google is better placed than Facebook to be at the true centre of things

        1. Ocular Sinister
          Unhappy

          Nokia, take note

          > ...Google is looking to be at the centre of connecting people...

          Oh Nokia, how you have failed us.

      2. Sitaram Chamarty
        Childcatcher

        @Justin: I'm sure there are lots like me...

        ...who have refused to touch facebook (and in my case have even forbidden my daughter from having an FB account) because of the "everyone in one bucket" problem.

        We don't have to be doing anything bad/criminal/shameful/naughty to want to segregate our social networks. Compromises like "don't invite your mum" or "don't invite colleagues as friends" are signs that you're letting a technology FAIL drive your social network. And making excuses for the failed tech too.

        So much for the value you place on this medium I suppose.

        (Oh and I have been told that FB does have such a feature but it is such a badly done, hard to use, bolt-on that it may as well not be there. Clearly if an FB fanboi like you did not mention "we have it too" it must be well hidden indeed so whoever told me this was correct!)

        I have helped people (on request) to set privacy settings properly on FB and have come away appalled. Last such experience was about 6 months ago.

        I now have sent a G+ invite to my daughter (yes the same one who can't have an FB account!), because I looked at the settings and they make sense. She will still have to exercise caution in what she says to whom but that's life. I'll watch what she does for a few weeks but by and large I'm OK with this.

        Yes I'll still watch Google's policies closely but I doubt they'll ever do the amazing amount of facepalm statements and actions that Zuckerburg/FB managed to do over the last few months/years. Nor will they, after the Buzz debacle, take this issue lightly either...

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