First it was Google Wave. Then it was Google Buzz. Now there’s news that Google has acquired yet another site: the social Q & A site, Aardvark. Does Google own the internet? Not quite, but maybe soon. Especially if they can manage to properly integrate the three sites.
Let’s see what they’re working with. There’s Wave, a social collaboration tool. There’s Buzz, which creates a social graph and allows you to keep connected with your contacts via a news feed. Then there’s Aardvark, which allows people to ask questions and have them answered in real time. Are you seeing the possibilities yet? But what’s the point of creating yet another social platform?
Google is primarily a search engine, which makes a whole lot of money from ads. What would happen if people didn’t need to rely on search anymore because they could just log in to their social network and ask a question? The Google team knows this so why not get in on the action so they can keep their users right where they are. That’s not all though. By monitoring the usage of its own social tools, Google will be able to offer highly targeted ads and that’s good news for advertisers.
Will this integration come off as planned? We’ll just have to wait and see. One can only hope, given the Buzz introduction debacle. Hopefully Google learned from that experience and can pull out a winner this time around.
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