Google+ Battles Facebook & Microsoft
Google is planning further integration between Google Plus and Gmail, along with a business edition of its emerging social networking service, two moves that could give Google's line-up a big leg up against Facebook, Twitter, and even cloud-based office suites such as Microsoft's new Office 365. Toshiba PA3782U-1BRS
As so often happens, Google announced both news tidbits about Google Plus through blog posts on its Web site. Late Sunday night, Mark Striebeck, engineering manager for Gmail front end, announced a "hangout" on Tuesday afternoon for developers to do some "creative brainstorming" around how to get better integration between Google Plus and Gmail.Toshiba PA3783U-1BRS
Striebeck told the developers: "I'm pretty sure that all of you use some e-mail client - many probably Gmail. But regardless of the client ... What email features would make it easier to interact with Google+ ? ... How could we integrate Google+ features into Gmail? ... How can we integrate social concepts in Gmail to make the email experience itself better?" Toshiba PA3784U-1BRS
Google : "Hangout" video chat, Picasa, and Gmail
Google Plus is currently in invite-only test mode. The current pre-release version incorporates a "hangout" feature for video chat and YouTube video sharing. It wouldn't be surprising if "hangout" helped to drive last week's announcement of a video chat deal between Facebook and the now Microsoft-owned Skype. In unveiling the deal through a Webcast, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that Facebook and Microsoft have teamed up before on multiple occasions, even prior to Microsoft's Skype buyout. Toshiba PA3785U-1BRS
Aside from hangout, the pre-release software also incorporates Gmail, along with Google Blogger and the Picasa photo sharing service, two other Google software offerings expected to see further integration into Google Plus at some point. Unlike either Twitter or Facebook, Google's blog space places no limits on the length of users' blogs.Toshiba PABAS217
Through greater integration between Gmail and Google Plus, Google stands to raise Gmail's competitive stature against other e-mail services and even Microsoft's new Office 365, a cloud-based office suite revolving around Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync servers and Microsoft Office applications. Toshiba PA3832U-1BRS
Not only is Gmail a competitor of sorts to Exchange, but Google Docs is a direct rival to Microsoft Office. For its part, Google Docs has recently added a number of new features, including the ability to embed videos from Picasa, for example.Toshiba PA3833U-1BRS
Meanwhile, although Microsoft is still planning data services integration between Windows Phone 7 smartphones, iPhones, and other mobile devices and its socially tinged Lync collaborative environment, the pre-release edition of Google Plus already includes an app for Android OS phones.
Business Edition: More of a boon to businesses or consumers?Toshiba PA3786U-1BRS
In another point of departure from Facebook and Twitter, Google is also eyeing a separate business product around its Google Plus social networking service.
In a blog post last week, Google' Christian Oestlien said Google will discourage businesses from building "regular" profiles, and that it will even shut down any such profiles.Toshiba PA3788U-1BRS
"The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness," according to Ostlein.
"How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands, and we want to create an optimal experience for both. We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year," he wrote.Toshiba PABAS223
"Over the next few months we are going to be running a small experiment with a few marketing partners to see the effect of including brands in the Google+ experience. We’ll begin this pilot with a small number of named partners. If you represent a 'non-user entity' (e.g. business, organization, place, team, etc.) and would like to apply for consideration in our limited program (and be amongst the first to be alerted when the business product launches) you can sign up here: http://goo.gl/zq95C."Toshiba PA3757U-1BRS
With details sketchy at this point, it's hard to say how a separate business edition of Google Plus will benefit businesses. However, "regular" users will certainly score a win if this separate edition makes it easy to tell whether blog posts on the social network are from other consumers or professional marketers.