Friday, July 20, 2007

Could Facebook Become The Next Microsoft?

When I sit down at my computer, the first thing I do is launch a browser and from there iGoogle owns my desktop. I use a form of gmail, the Google blog reader, and Goggle documents to collaborate with others.

It's interesting that Facebook is getting enough traction as a platform that someone would even think that:
Facebook is starting to become the one stop shop for content and interaction, be it through feeds, blog creation, image uploading and just plain ol’ social networking

[Goggle is] in a quest to become the No.1 destination of all things to all people. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Desktop…this list goes on and on. The difference with Facebook will be how the various applications are glued together, and this is where Facebook already has the advantage: Facebook’s origins as a social networking site means that everything they launch is linked in to that central core. Google has great products, but very little to tie them all together. People use Gmail or Reader as stand alone offerings, by comparison everything in Facebook is interlinked.
Goggle will integrate their components and get them playing together better, much like Microsoft did with Office back in the early 1990s. Talk like this about Facebook being king will spur Google to get on with it.

My money is still on Google to be the next Microsoft, but I'm less certain than I was. How about you?

No comments: