The news that Google’s trying to get on the social networking bandwagon doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise. But, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the powerful company doesn’t only want to take on Facebook. They’re planning to take your Facebook information and use that to power their own products.
Schmidt wants at Facebook’s social knowledge about its users. With this, he believes Google’s search quality can become more tailored. He may be a little pissed that Facebook has been stealing a ton of Google’s engineers, but Schmidt’s plan makes sense that simple revenge. If Google knew who your friends are, what you like and where you spend your free time, it would know what you wanted to search before you searched it yourself. (More on Techland: Google To Take On iTunes?)
“The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data,” Schmidt said at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. “Failing that, there are other ways to get that information.”
It’s not going to happen any time soon though. “Everybody has convinced themselves that there’s some huge project about to get announced next week. And I can assure you that’s not the case,” he stated. Let’s just hope that this much awaited announcement – whenever it comes – is that Google is changing their name to Skynet. (More on Techland: Rumored Google Me Network Not Quite As Anticipated)