Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2010; the news and rumours it reports, including references to ‘today’ and to Facebook not having gone public yet, refer to that time. Facebook went public in May 2012, and Skype calling arrived on Facebook in 2011.
The battle between Google and Facebook to conquer cyberspace is daily news in the United States, where hardly a day goes by without one of the two giants making a move.
Today it was confirmed that Lars Rasmussen is leaving Google for Facebook. Rasmussen is Google’s lead engineer, the man we have to thank for Google Maps and Google Wave.
Nobody knows yet what role he will play at Facebook or what Facebook is up to, but hiring him surely did not come cheap. Some say Facebook has not gone public yet because it is preparing a big surprise.
There are rumours that Facebook is building its own search engine, to be used from within the social network. That would be a serious problem for Google: even if it did not knock Google off the top spot, it would be a heavy blow, above all to its pride.
Some think he will launch the project to integrate Skype into Facebook, which would let you not only chat with your contacts on the social network but also call them for free through the app. Others say Facebook is developing an advanced geolocation system.
Of course, so far it is all rumour. The only thing that is certain is that today was Lars’s first day at Facebook.
What is clear is that while the internet is working at 15% of its potential, social networks have not reached even 5% of theirs. Almost all the information indexed on the web is being shared every day on Facebook and Twitter, so one day we may no longer need a search engine outside a social network.
Luckily for us, given how fast everything moves online and the pace of innovation, we will soon see how this plays out.
Featured image: Charlie Brewer, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
