Google ha sido muy hábil en el desarrollo de algoritmos de cómputo, como lo es su exitoso buscador de contenido en la internet al cual mucho recurrimos todos los días. Pero cuando Google piensa en características respecto a redes sociales la empresa no ha sido muy eficaz.
Google depende de tener el dedo en el pulso de toda la Internet, y mantener su estatus como la principal entrada a la Web. Pero a medida que la gente pasa más tiempo en las redes sociales como Facebook, donde muchos de los datos que comparten están fuera de los límites a los motores de búsqueda, es ahí donde entran los risgos para Google de perder en la competencia por el tiempo en que los usuarios invierten en la Web, aspectos tan coloquiales como son los detalles de sus vidas y, en última instancia, la publicidad.
Vic Gundotra, vicepresidente de Google, es responsable de las aplicaciones móviles
“Google a generado mucho dinero ayudando a la gente a tomar decisiones a través de los motores de búsqueda, pero más y más personas están recurriendo a las redes sociales para hacer tomas de decisiones“ dijo Charlene Li, fundador de Altimeter Group, centro de investigación de tecnología y consultoría, “Y cuando la gente toma decisiones, no hay dinero en juego.”
Google ha intentado crear componentes sociales, recientemente lazó Buzz, un servicio que dá a los usuarios de Gmail la posibilidad de compartir las últimas actualizaciones de estado, fotos y videos. Pero, aunque han tenido un gran esfuerzo y desarrollo y promoción, no ha sido muy popular.
Now the company will try again, with tools to be unveiled this fall, said Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive. Although the details remain murky, Mr. Schmidt and other Google officials sketched a broad outline of their plans in recent interviews.
Some of the tools are still being developed, they said; others will add features to existing products, like search, e-mail, maps, photos, video and ads.
The company plans to “take Google’s core products and add a social component, to make the core products even better,” Mr. Schmidt said.
But some wonder whether Google understands enough about social connections to create the tools people want to use.
“Google’s culture is very much based on the power of the algorithm, and it’s very difficult to algorithm social interaction,” Ms. Li said.
For example, the introduction of Buzz in February caused a wave of criticism from privacy advocates and everyday users, because it automatically included users’ e-mail contacts in their Buzz network. Google quickly changed the service so that it suggested friends instead of automatically connecting them.
Before Buzz’s release to the public, it was tested only by Google employees.
“There is some belief at Google that their DNA is not perfectly suited to build social products, and it’s a quite controversial topic internally,” said a person who has worked on Google’s social products who would speak only on the condition of anonymity.
“The part of social that’s about stalking people, sharing photos, looking cool — it’s mentally foreign to engineers,” the person said. “All those little details are subtle and sometimes missed, especially by technical people who are brought up in a very utilitarian company.”
Google has a social network, Orkut, but that never took off in the United States, although it is popular in Brazil and India. There are also Google profiles, which let people link Google to LinkedIn and Twitter, for example, so that information their friends have published online can appear in search results. Only a small percentage of Google users have created these profiles.
And as Facebook gains in popularity, it grows as a threat. Google sites, including the search engine and YouTube, get more unique visitors than Facebook. But in August, for the first time, people spent more time on Facebook than on Google sites, according to comScore, the Web analytics firm.
Some people are beginning to turn to their friends on Facebook for information for which they had used Google, like asking for recommendations on the best sushi or baby sitter.
Through a new partnership with Microsoft, an investor in Facebook, the things your friends like on Facebook can show up in the search results from Bing, Microsoft’s search engine.
The threat goes straight to the bottom line, too. Facebook is increasing its sales of display ads with images, which Google is counting on as its next big business.
Google has assembled a team of engineers to work on social networking, led by two executives who worked on Buzz — Vic Gundotra, vice president for engineering responsible for mobile applications, and Bradley Horowitz, a vice president for product management overseeing Google Apps.
“Google, as part of our mission to organize the world’s information, also needs to organize and make it very useful for you to see the interactions of your friends, to participate with them and benefit,” Mr. Gundotra said.