Unit 2, Article 5: Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet – and Keep Google Out

Vogelstein, F. (2009). Great wall of Facebook: the social network’s plan to dominate the internet – and keep Google out. In P. DePalma (Ed.), Annual Editions: Computers in Society (pp. 24-27). New York: McGraw Hill.

Summary:

This article was written by Fred Vogelstein and published in the July 2009 edition of Weird. The article discusses the history of two companies that have risen up in recent years to be huge presences on the World Wide Web. The two companies, Google and Facebook, are both extremely popular online destinations for web users which means that they have the capacity to generate quite a lot of profit through advertizing if they can just figure out the best way to do it. The two companies are currently racing to be the first to take over the online advertizing market and doing so in slightly different ways.

Google has been around for longer than facebook and is currently a larger company with a much larger profit margin. Google works by sending out “crawlers” over the web to bring back information. The crawlers assemble the information in Google’s servers. Google can then use the information collected for its search engines and to target advertizing to its users.

Facebook has its own servers which it has blocked so that the Google crawlers cannot access the information. Therefore, all the personal information that Facebook users have put into Facebook remains in the Facebook servers. Facebook can then use this personal information to target advertizing specifically to its users. This is the “Great Wall” of Facebook that Vogelstein refers to in his title.

One of the main points of the article is that the two companies are fighting to dominate the World Wide Web. Whichever company can gather the most information about the web’s users and figure out the most effective way to those users will come out on top. In time, we will find out who the winner will be.

Reaction:

I chose to read this article because I was surprised by the idea that Facebook would be trying to dominate the Internet. I see Facebook as an important part of my experience online – it is fun and entertaining – a good way to connect with friends and local businesses. However, Google seems like a much more integral part of my online experience. With Google, I can find more information – I can do research, and I can find out what is going on in the rest of the world. Facebook is full of other people’s Facebook pages, but Google search gives me access to websites, blogs, images, videos, and so much more. Google also has many powerful applications that I enjoy using such as Google calendar, Google documents, etc.

From my point of view, the products of both companies are useful and can be used interchangeably and simultaneously. I view my Facebook account by using Google Chrome. However, this article makes it sound like ultimately it is going to be one company or the other that comes out on top. I don’t see why the Internet cannot be big enough for the two companies to coexist.