Facebook Talk

So you may have heard how Google is planning to take on Facebook in the coming months, which I guess is big news in and of itself. But I want to look past the obvious here and again argue that Google would be the best suitor by far to purchase Facebook.

Google is a great company and all, but they’re not indestructible nor invincible. They’ve made a few products and releases that didn’t quite catch on as fast or strong as say their Gmail feature (I’m looking at you, Orkut! Wow, that was/is a crappy website…) But where other companies may have given up in that sector, Google has shown a history of in turn buying out an already successful site or product.

Take Google Video. After it was clear that the YouTube phenomenon wasn’t just a flash in the pan, Google rolled out their Google Video (GV) feature. But after a few months, it wasn’t quite the smash hit that YouTube still was at the time. Don’t get me wrong, GV had it’s share of loyal users, but it didn’t become the mega, all dominating video site on the Internet. At the same time, YT was running Google Adsense ads on their site, which meant in a sense Google was paying YouTube while at the same time trying to compete against them. So the minds over at Google got together and realized there was either one of two options to take. First, they could deny YouTube the right to display Adsense ads on their page, which would have created a huge negative buzz on the Internet AND allowed Yahoo to swoop in and make a deal with YouTube to use their version of advertisement. Or, they could right out purchase YouTube, add them to the Google Empire, and keep running strong. And I think we all know which road they went down.

Now you can argue the merits of their YouTube purchase until the cows come home, which for me would be a very long argument since I don’t live on a farm. But let’s think about this: Facebook is already one of the most established websites on the Internet. They’re not going anywhere. There’s been rumors for years now that Yahoo has unsuccessfully tried to buy Facebook as well. And Google has already found out the hard way that getting a strong foothold in the social network scene is a pain in the ass.

So how much longer is it going to be before Google makes a serious bid for Facebook, which would piss off a main competitor, expand their reach and depth of user information, and make them even more of a powerhouse in the Internet world?

It looks like Facebook has gone and made their first acquisition in the form of buying Parakey. Don’t fret if you’ve never heard of it, as I hadn’t either until about 5 minutes ago, but I gleaned the following from their Wikipedia page (which no doubt will see a flurry of activity shortly).

Parakey is a Web-based computer user interface proposed by Firefox contributors Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. Ross describes it as “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.” The idea behind it is to make image, video, and writing transfer to the web easier. He explains that the current problem with transferring data to the web is that in order to move an image onto the web you first have to transfer pictures from your digital camera, then upload them to a place like Flickr. Or, if you want to rant, you launch a blog on blogger.com before you can start talking.

Sounds cool to me. One can only imagine how this will hopefully soon change Facebook. I suspect before year’s end, users will be able to somehow send files such as pictures or home movies directly from their digital cameras straight to their friends via Facebook. No more uploading the picture from your camera to your computer then to your Flickr account before finally sending out a link to all your friends. I’m sure the folks over at Pownce are just thrilled about this!

More on this as it develops. Hopefully it won’t be much longer before we learn how Facebook plans to implement this into the site.
[via Inside Facebook, TechCrunch, and Mashable]

Facebook, parakey, google, applications, firefox, Techcrunch, pownce