Google competes with Facebook in social networking

Google has decided to give Facebook a run for its money in the world of social networking, by offering users the opportunity to more easily search for photos and social contacts through the site’s main engine. Google will soon allow for users who have logged on to their account to view search results including photos that friends have uploaded to Picasa albums or to Flickr, one of the most popular photo sharing sites. New links will also be added to Google’s English version, inviting users to create a “social circle” and to specifically search for “social content.” Social networking and new media specialists believe that Google’s move will serve as a direct challenge to Facebook.

In order to take advantage of this new tool, users must create a Google profile and be logged on to their account. Once this profile has been created, the search engine will automatically add search results from any contacts, including Gmail users. The world’s most powerful search engine will also gather information on contacts that each user has built on related sites, including Picasa, Twitter, FriendFeed and Flickr, in order to further expand one’s social circle and ensure that all relevant social search results are displayed whenever the main engine is used for finding sites.

An even more powerful feature of the search engine is that it will be able to track down written content created by one’s friends and published on a range of websites. These pages will then be displayed at the very top of the list whenever search results are generated.