Facebook “knows all about Google’s social product plans,” and has obtained copies of proprietary Google documents outlining their social strategy. So said a Facebook engineer at the TechCrunch party at August Capital on Friday to all within earshot.
Google has yet to confirm that they are launching a new social network, but rumors have been flying for the last several weeks that the company is hard at work on finding a way to compete with Facebook. Google is conducting focus groups to gather information about consumers’ social habits as well.
If Facebook does have these proprietary documents it’s possible they obtained them from a former Google employee who switched companies. Regardless, it’s reckless to boast about it. Zynga sued Playdom in 2009, accusing them of obtaining trade secrets and other proprietary information from former Zynga employees hired by Playdom. If that’s the case with Google and Facebook, we might see legal action taken sooner rather than later.
Both Google and Facebook declined to comment on this story.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term...
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....
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