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Comment by rimher | Hacker News Reader

If this is really what Google is trying to do, it's pointless. Google can't stop Facebook when it already has 2bln users, plus WhatsApp and Instagram.

There's just no way Google can beat them at their own game.

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IMO Facebook is just 9gag now, plus a huge dose of fake news, it's a shitty forum-type of site like digg or reddit but with terrible UI (here are the top 50 comments, you want the rest, keep clicking "More..."). Nobody shares anything personal anymore, it's just weblinks and, as I said, 9gag-ish content, plus people raging on topics like politics. I think the youth are now sharing their lives through the Snapchat-features of WhatsApp and Instagram, but lucky for Facebook they also own these 2.

If Google (as rumoured) redesigned their homepage to give you a personalized "news feed", that will eat Facebook's lunch. They need some social features to keep people engaged though.

The utility of Facebook outside chat and events is gone. They don't let you see posts anymore, just "your friend tagged their other friend in this meme".

So much for "connecting people".

Events is enough to keep people using it, though.

Sometimes I think that the only features FB uses internally are events and groups. They're the only parts of the site that do what you want them to do well and intuitively.

Plenty of my friends share personal stuff to group of friends on FB. There are many very active specific topic groups, e.g. 40k fans, asian food cooking groups, which are much more active than say reddit groups for the same topic. Facebook is still regular people choice.

You are right FB is big with some groups but not all. It's too much work to start something but existing groups will stay

> They need some social features to keep people engaged though

2017: the year Google Plus crushes Facebook!

The contents of your newsfeed are mostly determined by the people you befriend and the pages you like, as modified by your mute settings. If your feed is full of garbage, try changing those parameters. Plenty of people have a good experience because they have given inputs that reflect what they really want to see. The same is true on many other sites, BTW, and across sites as well. If all of the content on SuperCoolTechNews was garbage, would you still visit or follow their RSS feed? Even Google creates a filter bubble based on what you've searched for and which results you've clicked on.

The internet is becoming ever more personalized. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for you largely depends on your own behavior.

And to be honest, if they somehow did, I would be even more scared of their power than now. I don't want to depend on one single company for every detail of my digital life, thank you very much. Just as I don't want to trust one single company with all of my digital data.

That is not the internet I want.

Google has more users than Facebook

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