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If Facebook was trying to launch an integrated search engine or a GMail competitor, then I would absolutely agree with you - those products would be inherently
by markkat 15y ago
If Facebook was trying to launch an integrated search engine or a GMail competitor, then I would absolutely agree with you - those products would be inherently limited by the requirement that they tie into and feed back towards Facebook's core platform, but that isn't the case here.
I see where you are coming from. However, given the potential overhead of running a social network, plus the revenue that might come with it, do you think that Google's priorities might evolve, -that they might morph into a social network, taking their other products with it?
- cheald 15y agoNot really, no. Google is an advertising company; their revenue comes from understanding people and selling that understanding by proxy to advertisers. Google+ is yet another way for them to do that, and it's just one facet of their business. It's a very powerful facet, and they have a lot to gain by making it work well, but it isn't the crown jewel. As far as overhead, I'd suspect that Google+ isn't even a blip on Google's overall radar in terms of overhead - the latest Netcraft survey puts Google as running 4.6% of all webservers on the internet; while it's certainly a large undertaking, Google is at such massive scale already that I don't think deploying a social network necessitates a severe shift in focus.