As many have suspected, Google is working to develop social media into its search engine business model. I commented on a blog last month in which naysayers were claiming that Google had missed the social media bandwagon and that Facebook was going to crush them etc etc. Myself and one other poster pointed out a key thing about Google though- they have all that valuable information. Truth be told it is a lot less time consuming and arduous to create a social media platform than it is to index billions of webpages. So if anyone has the upper-hand going forward its Google. By combining social media elements to search engines Google is bringing together two of the most common online activites- searching and being social- into one platform and frankly they’ve done the hard work first. Communities of common interest can easily form around a new engine like this once it hits the market, and I’m pretty excited about it. I just pumped my fist again.

Google is being supported by Myspace and a host of other platforms including Linkedin in its efforts to socialize searching. Linkedin also recently synergized its platform with Twitter, making users of both services able to update both at once by cross filing. The new service should be available in a few days. Notably absent from Google’s growing coalition of social media allies is Facebook, who many feel is working to develop their own search engine service to their model. What an epic standoff that may become. Social media search engines will create another exciting chapter of the internet as we move forward, and businesses, schools, private citizens and public personalities will be forced to pay attention. Real-time information exchange and perhaps just as importantly idea-exchanges will be facilitated by these kinds of platforms, which is why Rupert Murdoch blocking Google from News Corp pages is just another example of how utterly closed minded and ignorant the Australian media tycoon is.

Murdoch recently suggested a full ban on the search engine as he has long accused them of being a parasite who feeds on his news tit without his companies profiting. Frankly it wouldn’t make a difference to me if he does, I can’t imagine any critically thinking person seriously referencing Fox News as a credible source. And if you yourself are on the fence about that just watch the documentary Outfoxed. If Murdoch really goes ahead with this he’ll be moving his media empire slowly back in time as the internet continues to develop and grow, having a continued impact on society. Google is one of the major players in that development whether he likes it or not and as their new intention to incorporate social media demonstrates they’re clearly thinking about the future. A future with or without Murdoch’s muckracking sensationalist “news”.

Funny isn’t it. It took nearly the same amount of time for Google to become the dominant force that it is today both as a search engine and more, as it took Microsoft and Yahoo to finally hammer out a partnership aimed at dominating the search engine and more market. Microsoft is confident that the release of their new Bing search engine will re-assert their presence online and have partnered with Yahoo, the second largest engine after google, to leverage their product and brand. Interesting that just as Google begins to produce software for personal computers, a market traditionally dominated by Microsoft, then MS turns around and sticks it to Google where they’ve been most dominant.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in these people’s boardrooms. I wonder if they have a Risk board or Axis and Aliies out on the table? My advice to Microsoft/Yahoo as a humble technology and software blogger would be to try something new. Make something new. It’s what’s made Google so dominant. They kept on introducing new products, new features, new apps, and lots of them. Some of them didn’t stick, but some really did. Google Maps is a great example. Even the products that Google is releasing to move into Microsoft territories are more innovative than Microsoft’s. New features, new uses etc.

Microsoft suffers from a lack of imagination, something that Google has embraced as a key pillar in their strategy. There are plenty of search engines, a few of them are popular, one of them is utterly dominant. If I were a business, I wouldn’t try and catch up with Google when I could spend money to innovate and release a product that people instantly gravitated to, people will need to be pulled away from Google. Another search engine, just a search engine, won’t do that. With all that money and all that power one would think that Microsoft wouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel, but here they go. Maybe they have to? These guys aren’t stupid. I can’t be smarter than Microsoft Corporation? Can I?

With the release of Chrome, Google is aggressively moving into Microsoft’s territory. If Google is able to muscle into that market, they put themselves in a strong position for whatever comes down the pipe. What do most people use their computers for? The internet. Google has the internet part down- their brand is the internet. If they can get the platforms for PC down too then their options open up even more to produce more products similar to Wave and Chrome.  Seamlessly integrating the things that people use their computers for both offline and online is where Google appears to be looking ahead to.

Once again if I were Microsoft I’d be digging in a trench around PC platforms and I would’ve been working hard to make an OS that didn’t crash or jam up for the past five years instead of releasing a search engine to challenge Google once they owned 70-80% of global traffic. Focus on your strengths, admit your weaknesses, innovate, innovate, innovate. And above all else, admit that things change fast in this world. A 5 to 10 year head start is all Google needed to put them so far ahead in this category that no one is catching up anytime soon.

I’m curious to see how this plays out. I can’t imagine it being too successful for MS/Yahoo. Maybe in the short run the stocks will go up, but in the long run I think they’ve picked the wrong battle.