SAN FRANCISCO -- Google co-founder Larry Page has a Facebook fixation.
When he replaced his mentor Eric Schmidt as Google's CEO last April, Mr. Page insisted that the company had to be more aggressive about countering the threat posed by Facebook's ever-growing popularity.
That social networking crusade is still reshaping Google Inc. as he marked his one-year anniversary as chief executive on Wednesday.
The Facebook obsession has already led to Google's creation of its own social network, Google Plus, and inspired changes in Google's privacy practices and Internet search results. Those changes have raised questions about whether the Internet's most powerful company has forsaken its "Don't Be Evil" motto in its zeal to protect its online advertising empire.
"Facebook awoke Google to its shortcomings in the social aspect of the Internet. It wasn't something that could be ignored," said Steven Levy, whose book "In The Plex" provided an inside look at Google's origins and evolution over 14 years.
Fretting about Facebook may seem like overkill, given Google's dominance of the Internet's lucrative search and advertising market. Last year, Google sold $36.5 billion in advertising -- 10 times more than Facebook's $3.2 billion.
But Mr. Page realized Facebook has been carving out a competitive advantage that could be leveraged to topple Google.
Since its 2004 inception, Facebook has been stockpiling valuable information about people's social circles and interests. The volume of insightful data pouring into Facebook has mushroomed along with its service's popularity. That has provided Facebook with the means to target ads more precisely and deliver content tied to a user's hobbies and tastes.
Google couldn't use most of that data to refine its search engine and other products, which is why it developed its own social network.
Since its debut nine months ago, Google Plus has attracted more than 100 million users. Although it lags Facebook's 845 million, the number is far greater than Facebook's tally at that stage in its history.
But Google Plus hasn't proven it can hold users' attention. Visitors have been spending an average of just a few minutes per month on Google Plus compared with six to seven hours on Facebook, according to the research firm comScore Inc.
Nevertheless, Google Plus and other social networking features allow the company to learn more about its users' lives, just as Facebook has done for years on its online hangout. Now, Google can try to use some of that knowledge to sell more ads, the source of virtually all its revenue.
Facebook's threat figures to become even greater after the company emerges from an initial public offering of stock, likely to be completed next month. The IPO is expected to raise $5 billion and generate free publicity that could attract even more traffic to Facebook. The IPO will likely eclipse Google's 2004 stock market debut as the biggest for a U.S. Internet company.
Google said Mr. Page was too busy for interviews about his past year as CEO.
When he took over as CEO, Mr. Page quickly made his top priority clear by moving Google's executive offices into the same building as the team working on Google Plus.
He also tied a portion of employee bonuses to the success of Google Plus and eliminated what he considered to be unnecessary distractions by closing more than 20 of the company's less popular services, including an initiative to digitize health records.
Some of Google's tactics to fend off Facebook have been interpreted as signs that Google is turning into a ruthless company willing to go to any length to protect its core business.
"That idealistic flame still burns in Google," said Ken Auletta, who got to know Mr. Page while writing his book about the company, "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It."
"But what happens, as time goes on, and you are no longer a young company, you have to make the compromises of adulthood."
First Published 2012-04-06 04:18:34
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