WASHINGTON \u2013 Google, the king of Internet search but a bust on the social front, launched its rival to Facebook on Tuesday, a social networking service called Google+.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnline sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it,\u201d Google\u2019s senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post about the long-awaited social networking initiative from the Internet giant.<\/p>\n
Unveiling Google+, Gundotra stressed the ability it gives users to separate online friends and family into different \u201cCircles,\u201d or networks, and to share information only with members of a particular circle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to make Google better by including you, your relationships and your interests.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the criticisms of Facebook is that updates are shared with all of one\u2019s friends unless a user has gone through a relatively complicated process to create separate Facebook Groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot all relationships are created equal,\u201d Gundotra said. \u201cSo in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is that today\u2019s online services turn friendship into fast food \u2013 wrapping everyone in \u2018friend\u2019 paper \u2013 and sharing really suffers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Google+, located at plus.google.com<\/span>, is currently being tested by a small number of people or is available by invitation only.<\/p>\n But Google said in a message on the site that it \u201cwon\u2019t be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n Google unveiled several new tools integrated into Google+, including \u201cHangouts,\u201d which allows for video chatting among friends, \u201cMobile\u201d for location-sharing and \u201cHuddle\u201d for group text messaging.<\/p>\n Photos and video can be uploaded and shared among Circles using a feature known as \u201cInstant Upload,\u201d while an online sharing engine called \u201cSparks\u201d delivers content from the Web into a user\u2019s feed.<\/p>\n Google dominates Internet search but the Mountain View, California, company has failed to make inroads on the social networking front, where Facebook has accumulated nearly 700 million users and Twitter around 200 million.<\/p>\n Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, speaking at the AllThingsD technology conference last month, took responsibility for the company missing the wave when it came to making services social, saying \u201cI screwed up.\u201d<\/p>\n Google\u2019s last major foray into social networking \u2013 Google Buzz, launched in February 2010 \u2013 spawned a slew of privacy complaints and led to a slap on the wrist from the US Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n Under a settlement between the US regulator and Google announced in March, Google is required to implement a comprehensive privacy program and will be subject to independent privacy audits every two years for the next 20 years.<\/p>\n Google+ makes its debut as Google and Facebook wage a fierce battle over online advertising dollars and how people navigate the Internet.<\/p>\n Google does not send people to Facebook and vice versa, and both companies are seeking to become the chief gateway to the Internet.<\/p>\n In May, Facebook was left red-faced after acknowledging it had hired a prominent public relations firm to draw attention to privacy practices at Google.<\/p>\n Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of technology blog SearchEngineLand.com<\/span>, said in a blog post it was \u201canyone\u2019s guess\u201d as to whether Google+ would be successful.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re happy using Facebook, there seems relatively little to make you want to switch over to Google Plus, at the moment,\u201d said Sullivan, who received an early glimpse of the new service from Google.<\/p>\n \u201cPerhaps if there are people who want a Facebook alternative, Google\u2019s now got a core to build on for them.\u201d WASHINGTON \u2013 Google, the king of Internet search but a bust on the social front, launched its rival to Facebook on Tuesday, a social networking service called Google+. \u201cOnline sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it,\u201d Google\u2019s senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":4629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[185],"tags":[191,199,205],"class_list":["post-4628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-meipta","tag-majlis-ketua-e-pembelajaran","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meipta.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n-asiaone<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"