Google Builds Alliance to Take on Facebook

Nov 01, 12:32 PM

Current Headlines: By Miguel Helft and Brad Stone

Google and some of the leading social networks on the Web are teaming up to take on the new kid on the block - Facebook.

An alliance of companies led by Google will begin Thursday to introduce a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google's social network, Orkut, and others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.

The strategy was aimed at one-upping Facebook, which opened its service to outside developers last spring. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site and been adopted by millions of the users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a "news feed" that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

The New York Times learned of the alliance's plan from people briefed on the matter. Google, which had planned to introduce the alliance at a party Thursday evening, later confirmed the plan.

"It is going to forestall Facebook's ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook," said a person with knowledge of the plans who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the alliance. The group's platform, called OpenSocial, was "compatible across all the companies," that person said.

"Facebook got the jump by announcing the Facebook platform and getting the traction they got," the person said. "This is an open alternative to that."

The alliance includes the business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle, who are moving to let third-party programmers write applications that can be accessed by their customers.

The start of OpenSocial comes just a week after Google lost to Microsoft in a bid to invest in Facebook and sell advertising on the social network outside the United States. And it comes just before the expected introduction by Facebook of an advertising system next week, which some analysts believe could compete with Google's.

Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google, said that the alliance's conversations preceded Microsoft's investment in Facebook.

"Obviously, we would love for them to be part of it," Kraus said of Facebook. Facebook declined to comment.

Facebook's success with its platform has proved that the combination of social data and news feeds is a powerful mechanism to help developers distribute their software. They are now seen as must- have functions for many Internet companies. Other social networks and Web companies, including MySpace and the instant messaging service Meebo.com, have announced plans to open their sites in similar ways. For now, however, Facebook has become the preferred platform for software developers.

By teaming with others, Google hopes to create a rival platform that could have broad appeal to developers. A person briefed on the plans said the sites in the alliance had a combined 100 million users, more than double the size of Facebook.

The developers of some of the most popular Facebook applications, including iLike, Slide, Frixter and RockYou, were expected to be present Thursday evening at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, where they were to announce that they would tailor their programs to run on the OpenSocial sites.

The effort faces several hurdles. Developers may not see the advantage to writing programs that run across such remarkably different networks as, for example, LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals, and hi5, which is popular in Central America.

For Google, the effort could breathe new life into Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and other countries, but not in the United States.

While the move could also help some rival social networks, Google could benefit from their success, in part, by helping to sell advertising on those sites.

That strategy would fit into a model that Google has begun talking about recently. Vic Gundotra, head of Google developer programs, said last week that Google would begin a project to create software tools and give them away free in an open-source format.

The goal, he said, was to improve not just Google's applications, but any software that ran on the Web. That, in turn, would drive more Internet use, and Google would benefit indirectly by selling advertising, he said.

Google has not been able to establish itself as a force in social networking, and it clearly wants to. "One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real," Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, said recently. "If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real."

Google said it has advertising relationships with several social networks, including a $900 million partnership to sell ads on MySpace, which the company said was performing well. Google is also making money on Facebook, through ads that run inside applications that are used on that network.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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