According to former Screensavers host and Digg founder Kevin Rose, Google is about to unveil a new “social profile” service called Google Me to compete with Facebook. It’s just a big rumor at this point but considering that it’s coming from Rose, I would assume that there’s some truth to it.
Of course, given that the world’s largest search provider has already failed in its bid to dethrone Twitter with Buzz and taking into account the fact that they already own a social networking company (Orkut), I don’t think the folks at Facebook have much to worry about – even if this rumor turns out to be true.
Poor Orkut was overrun by Brazilians.
Facebook is too well-established, with a huge subscriber base that’s not going to be interested in jumping ship unless Google has some totally rad features that the world has never seen and can’t be duplicated by anyone else (not bloody likely).
Only time will tell. It’s kind of like chrome has been an unlikely success story. Google capitalized on providing people with a feature, and it works well. Now if Google can just get a start up user base, and couple that with some great features, people will slowly transfer. This is also coupled with the fact that Facebook does not current have a high approval rating due to privacy concerns.