|
By Lara Sinclair
www.theaustralian.com
February 11, 2010
GOOGLE is hitting back at the popularity of social networking website Facebook with the launch in Australia of Google Buzz, which allows Gmail users to see their friends' updates from their email account.
Google said on Tuesday in the US it would launch the service, which will also be made available on mobile phones, to tens of millions of users of the company's Gmail service worldwide within days. The move is being seen as an attempt by Google to protect its revenue base, which is based largely on the company receiving small amounts of money from the tiny percentage of its vast global audience that clicks on sponsored text ads.
In its six years, Facebook has amassed more than 400 million users globally, but most of the information they post is excluded from Google's search engine, making social search a relatively untapped market. While Facebook has already overtaken Google in several markets, Google is still the most-visited website in Australia.
|
