Google now eyeing social networking

In my last post on Google, they were knocking on the door of telecommunication with the launch of Google’s Nexus phone and the online store. Unfortunately, that move was not so well received.

Before that Google threw its hat into the OS arena with Google Chrome OS. In my earlier post, I was not so impressed but others seem to be excited with it.

Now listen…. they want to pick a fight with Facebook and Twitter in the social networking business as well. Google is rumored to be set to release new features on Gmail allowing users to update their status for friends to see as part of a move that sees the search giant embrace social media initiatives popularised by other social networking sites (SNS).

The new service is reportedly similar to the status-bar tools seen on Facebook and Twitter, and will further incorporate photo and video sharing.

This new development – which is widely expected to be formally announced sometime this week – comes one week after Facebook marked its sixth birthday by revealing it has more than doubled its number of users in the last year to 400 million.

Google and Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, have recently looked to incorporate social-media services to make their offerings more relevant for users also active on SNS. In October, both Google and Bing announced they would adopt a Twitter function to reflect audiences’ growing interest and trust in social commentary. Microsoft was first to launch its Bing Twitter Search function and further connected with Facebook to offer search results on users’ updated statuses.

Further blurring the lines between search, portals and SNS, Friendster and Yahoo Southeast Asia last month also entered into a multi-year strategic partnership that lets mutual users more efficiently share information.

Now what?

Gmail certainly has a lot of users nowadays because of its simplicity to use. Many users have ditched Yahoo mail because of the clutter of news and other content that Yahoo tried to shove down the users throat. Will this move marked a grave mistake by Google?

As it is, Gmail is already pretty heavy to load with all the complex pageload. On days when the trust-worthy Streamyx typically hit bottleneck speed – one will have to switch to basic-view. Imagine, if status-update and more photo and video is added – can the users cope?

Whatever it is – welcome to the social networking bandwagon, Sir. May I introduce you to your fellow latecomer… Tan Sri Vincent Tan from Malaysia. Please get acquainted!

Update Wed 10 Feb 2010

Here it is! I checked my Gmail account this morning and there’s a new line ‘Buzz’ at the left menu column. Just under the Inbox link. Clicking on the link, it opens up a new Buzz page with a welcoming note that informed me that Gmail has conveniently made me follow 14 other people in my contact list – but for some reason none of them has a reciprocal follow on me. It also tells me that my post on Picasaweb photo services will be automatically posted into my Buzz.

If anyone is concerned about Facebook privacy… by comparison Google has even less care about my say who I want to follow or what I want to share with other people. If earlier, I was saying about how Yahoo shove unwanted content at its Yahoo! mail service… this time Google just shackle me down with forced connections. What if I’m a minor and some of those my contact list is shady characters? (contact list is, by default, automatically added based on your email sent put

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The cheek and arrogance of them. In fact Google executives were reported at the Buzz launch to say that online social networking has become so widespread and disorganized that only Google, with its massive reach and immense computing power, can make sense of it all.

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“It has become a core belief of ours that organizing the social information on the Web is a Google-scale problem,” Todd Jackson, Gmail product manager, said at the launch.

Yes… Gmail may have 176 million users. But not everyone is an active user and as I speak, a few people I checked who are inactive registered users, noted that the Buzz component isn’t in their page.