It was a matter of time before Google threw their hat into the social networking ring. Whether it will rival Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is yet to be seen, though.
Usually, their projects follow two paths: either they are a fantastic success or they go as silently as they came. Google Profiles has been around for a little while, but it hasn't been advertised anywhere as much as it has been lately.
Of course, their biggest success has been the search engine itself, but that success is followed by the wildly popular Google AdWords.
How Can Google Profiles Beat the Competition?
The idea behind AdWords was simple: show related, text-based advertisements that are based on web-searches and the very content that the user is searching for. The previous method was to create the most annoying advertisement possible in the hopes that the user would click on it out of ignorance to just to keep it quiet, but the unobtrusive text advertisements have fared exceptionally well with companies and customers preferring them. The core concept of AdWords is the same as Google used for their search engine—keep it simple, and don't clutter up the page with more information than the searcher wants! Hopefully, Google Profiles will follow the same pattern and remove the ever-increasing clutter seen on social networking pages.
MySpace is preferred by many users because it allows you to customize your own page, to create your profile and add as much junk as you'd like. Sadly, that customization is abused by most users to create horrifying, cluttered pages which are difficult to navigate. Facebook suffers from an opposite problem where they have heavily restricted the personalization of pages. They allow you to install applications and interact with other users in unique ways, but their grip on the social networking community is weakening as their finger continually slips off of the pulse of the demographic they are seeking to attract.
These are lessons Google and the rest of the world have learned from seeing social networks come and go, so it's unlikely that they will take the risk of following bad examples.
What's the Future of Google Profiles?
Right now, you can suggest and vote on features that Google Profiles will have. They have the resources, capital, and talent to potentially create a social networking tool that will put all of the others to shame. Social networking is a difficult business to break into as a new company. Google has the luxury of time, and they can build their profiles over time to accommodate the bloggers, micro-bloggers, advertisers, and everyone else without scrambling to make a profit immediately. The infrastructure is already in place, and their only concern is to create a good product that can integrate with the other applications and services they've already developed.
When you search for a name on Google along with “profile” or “Google profile”, a sponsored link appears for google.com/profiles/me/ unless there is already a profile available. As the number of users grows over time, the profiles will be front and center when you search for a name. With the amount of celebrities and professionals searched on Google, it would be a very poor decision to not have a profile on there.
If all of the other applications are integrated with the profiles, such as Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Talk, then Google Profiles are easily positioned to become a serious competitor if not the “de facto” social service. They already have the branding, the exposure, and the trust of users world-wide, so don't be surprised if they become the next big thing.
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