False Alarm: Google Circles Not Coming Now, And Probably Not Ever

The fact that Google is going out of their way to pour water on this is kind of interesting in itself. It almost suggests that they have some kind of under-the-covers agreement (I guess it can't be Facebook, but maybe Twitter?) that they're trying hard not to step on?

From what I've observed they seem to have firmly adopted a different strategy for social which involves organically growing their existing products with social features rather than trying a high profile (and high risk) product launch. To me this demonstrated some much needed corporate self-awareness (there are some things Google just isn't good at) and so I was pretty surprised to see that they would have reversed that and gone for a big splash.

I honestly think Google has all the seeds to make a competitive social offering but they need to play their cards very carefully and tie things together in the right way. If they can weave Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube and Picasa together then they basically have Facebook's feature set. All of these products are best of class and loved individually by their users. Add Android into the mix and Google even has a trump card they can play. The question is how Google can gently usher all those users / technologies into one cohesive social offering without harming the individual products, alarming people about privacy or any other negative consequences. It has to be done carefully and gradually and with sensitivity. I think this is exactly what they've been doing and is the smart strategy.

Thank goodness. If Google took over social, too, I'd be forced to quit the Internet.

Ceding all that power to one entity (a company no less), is just insanity.

They released a video a /while/ ago (6mo to a year, I think) that explained research into the "Google Circles" idea. That's where this rumor started.

I spent about ten minutes googling around for it, but apparently my google fu is weak tonight.

In case you missed it, the confusion resulted from an old Google page that explains how social search works.

See http://www.google.com/s2/u/0/search/social#socialcircle and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319412

Glad we don't have to deal with another Google social media flop.

Although they're obviously doing something around social search, as in their own system:

http://www.google.com/s2/u/0/search/social#socialcircle

Honestly, I'd rather see Google and Facebook joining forces than trying to make competition! If those two work together, imagine how to web could be!