Facebook to take on Google?

There is a great deal of talk around Facebooks latest change, the removing of ‘become a fan’ with simply ‘like’. Personally I think this is an absurd change, one because it also removed the capacity to comment on fan pages people join, and also because the change hasn’t applied to groups so I keep on liking people joining groups instead of joining them myself. What Facebook plans to achieve from this confused me, so I decided to do a little bit of investigating. What I uncovered shocked me, apparently they plan to not only rule the social networks, but now take over the entire net. Currently whilst no one organisation really rules the internet, probably the most powerful entity would have to be Google. Google is so revolutionary because of its capacity to sort search results by relevance. Previously all search engines would sort information based on how many times your searched phrase appeared on the page. Google instead sorts thing based on page rank, that is how many times other websites link back to your page. It is a tad more complicated then that (I myself had to do several hours of research page ranking when this blog started and i still don’t completely grasp it) but that is the basic point. With this patented method Google has been able to go unchallenged as supreme search engine for years. But now Facebook may pose a threat to this with their new plans to expand beyond social networking. At their latest summit, Facebook revealed plans to allow users to ‘like’ pages outside of Facebook. For example you could like a Wikipedia page, your university homepage, or even this blog. By doing this Facebook would be able to recommend sites based on what you and your friends like, thus making a much more customized approach to what Google currently offers.
Not only does Facebook plan to create a new way to search, but also intends on having customised ads all over the web. You know Google also has Google Ad sense, a great tool that places advertisements on the side of websites based on its page contents? Well if everything goes according to plan Facebook ads you see in the side of your Facebook page will now extend to anywhere you go. And instead of being based on what your looking at they will be on the contents of our Facebook page. Lol this is why I have had my relationship status set to engaged for four years. I find receiving ads for wedding cake and photographers so much more cheerful than any of the other ones they offer. But currently these ads are exclusive to when I’m browsing FB.
These plans of Facebook do sound incredibly bold. This is all based on information that has been released by FB themselves. One place however that has kept their lips shut is in fact Google. What a lot of people don’t realise is that the Googolplex (Google HQ) does an awful lot of technological research on a vast area of subjects. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they had something up their arsenal for what is soon to be called the great Facebook vs Google internet wars. Lets just hope none of us get made collateral damage...

Xoxo
E