Google Slides away from Wave FAIL with social network buy

Google has bought social network tech outfit Slide for an undisclosed sum in its latest effort to tackle Facebook’s Web2.0 dominance. The buy came just 48 hours after Google killed its Wave tool, which made a splash landing in May 2009. But within a year of its birth, the email-IM-and-everything-else-Web-2.0-splatter-gun …

[Justin Clements]

they just don't get it....

Look Google, it's really simple. I have been invited to many social networking sites, and only joined one, Facebook.

I'm on Facebook, so are my friends. We're not changing from Facebook just so Google can make more money, nope, we're happy on Facebook, and letting the owners of Facebook try and make money out of us instead. We're not going to invest hours upon hours running a second social site and bringing our friends across etc.

Google can buy as many social networking sites as they want. Google can spunk as much money up a wall as they want finding a competitor to Facebook, but frankly, it's all a waste, because non of us are moving. We're happy where we are thanks.

So please Google, if you want to compete with Facebook, stump up the $4bn or so you need to buy it and be done with. Cheaper in the long run.

Face it Google, you missed this boat. It sailed a long time ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Justin Clements

i think i remember similar comments being banded around a few years back only replacing facebook with myspace

you might not be willing to change, but if google do something pretty and make it work your friends might,

i hope they dont bolt it to Gmail though, it aint broke, i wish to hell they would stop trying to fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

and those of not on facebook

aren't really going to be interested in yet another facebook clone

[Jim_aka_Jim]

I completely agree

There are 2 reasons I'd move 'social networking' site to a Goole one:

1)Facebook does something stupid like create a service called 'Buzz' that destroys the flimsy privacy settings it currently provides (or does something equally dumb).

2)Google pays me the money it makes off advertising when I look at it: fractions of pence add up you know.

Chance of either of these? I imagine it involves a googolplex

[AC-This-Isn't-Facebook]

Title Required

And buy it is exactly what they will do... sooner or later. Perhaps it won't be a 100% stake, but it will be substantial none the less. It is inevitable.

[ad47uk]

If google got hold of Facebok, I would leave

Then I would leave Facebook and I know a few more that would do the same thing.

i tend to stay clear of Google, don't trust Google what so ever, I don't trust facebook much, but htye are a bit better than Google.

[DrXym]

Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Friends Reunited etc. etc.

There are dozens of social network sites. Some have succeeded, some haven't or have seen their users migrate.

At the moment Facebook is king of the heap but I can well see the same thing happening to Facebook as has happened to so many other sites. People get bored with sites or something better comes along. Social networking is especially vulnerable because its largely a fad.

Doesn't mean Google will succeed of course and some of their recent projects have been pretty hamfisted. Look how crappy Buzz turned out for example, in part because it integrated with the email address book, pissing off people who didn't want to share personal details. I think Google might be better off to keep social networking separate from their other products (or only have very lowkey integration). . Keep the thing separate, almost like a separate spinoff, and if and only if it takes off, gently and thoughtfully start bring it into the fold.

In fact Google should probably be taking a good look at itself in the mirror and wondering if middle age is creeping up. Where once it could do no wrong, these days its following the same trajectory as Microsoft and IBM before spawning projects left and right in an almost aimless fashion. Perhaps now is the time to pull back a bit and shake things up before the rot really sets in.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda true, but...

Facebook was in our books the one that 'came later'. We already had one social networking site: hi5. I'm talking late 2004, which places it around the Facebook birthdate ... but hi5 is in fact *older* than FB. It also was the primary site for most of us until sometime around 2009; the Facebook craze arrived late over here.

New social networking sites might topple the strong ones. Myspace used to be the big one a few years ago in the US, but Facebook took over the leadership. Of course, it also helped that Facebook sounds good, and Myspace sounds like "My Scene" ... and I start relating it with knockoff Barbie dolls. Ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

For Google, the web is about people

And there was me thinking it was about selling advertising in order to make profits

[Anonymous Coward]

MySpace

Erm, we were all on MySpace before Facebook. And Live Journal before that...

Communities can change really quickly if they become fashionable!

[J-Wick]

Not quite...

Actually, not quite. Only a small proportion of my friends were on myspace or Friendster.

The number of friends / girls who snubbed me a school / ex-bullies who are now bald / people who I'd actually lost touch with and wanted to reconnect with, who *were* on FB but not on its predecessors was about an order of magnitude...

[Mr Jolly]

How many social networks?

So, not being content with owning one social network called Orkut, they've gone and bought something or other called Slide which does what Orkut does in that it provides a social network where you can become friends to people you've never heard of?

Okay....!

[Tom 13]

Google can build all the social networking sites they want

Just so long as they keep it separate from my mail files I don't care. I might choose to opt in, I might not. Force me in and my mail account just may walk too. The problem wasn't Buzz per se, it was that they initially FORCED you into Buzz.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem

Google just aquired a website that helps people SuperPoke Pets.

Aren't there laws against Poking your Pets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me

Or is slide not really a social network but a way of google using their products inside most social networking sites, for example, games for all different socal networking sites with google adverts inside?

[Renato]

Googly's Social Network

And there is a social network from Google: orkut. Although only Brazilians use it.

It seems Google doesn't know what products/services they have.

[MineHandle]

Facebook is Google

It's interesting how Google can't see themselves in the mirror. Facebook is the Google of the social networking world. Nothing is going to rid the world of Facebook - not even Google. Just like Microsoft, try as it might, can't rid the world of Google.

Facebook is massive. It's turned into the defacto standard social networking system. Just like MS Office is the standard for Office software. I know people on Facebook who a few years ago would never have dreamed of joining ANY social network site (and that includes me!).

It's also telling that MS spotted the opportunities of Facebook before Google and bought a minority stake in return for search and advertising hook ups. Google and social networking reminds me very much Microsoft and in the internet (especially search) in the noughties.

[asdf]

I don't own my own biz bitch

I think you find that although FB is huge and popular they generate the amount of revenue that Google spends on toilet paper alone for their main campus. It also seems like their immature CEO may need lawyers for a long time to come. As for trust both make me leary but at least Google has given me the best browser on the planet and an open video codec as well. What has FB done lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mirrors...

It's well known that Vampires (and presumably other blood sucking parasites) don't show up in mirrors, hence Google CAN'T see themselves.

More seriously though, Facebook seems to be hell bent on self destruction, so it would make sense for Google to have an alternative waiting in the wings, even if they don't want to go head to head right now.

[Jim Preis]

blinding glimpse of the obvious

I just noticed that Schmidt's lenses were the o's and his ear was the second g in the graphic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else think

that google wave might actually have worked if it integrated fully with Gmail so it was an extension of normal emailing rather than a separate system?

[Ismael]

Yeah

That's exactly what I thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares

Most of the 6 billion people on the planet couldn't care less.