Just so you comprehend how large this is, Google is by far the largest web skill in the US: 153 million Americans strike the hunting engine alone in 2011 – the singular largest website in the US – with YouTube forthcoming in fifth, with 100 million uniques. This story is steady all over the world, and in a few cases it’s even worse: Google “only” has 65% of the hunting marketplace in the US, but in many European countries (Germany, France, England, etc.) that figure is closer to 90%. YouTube, likewise, is incredibly renouned all over the world. The total for services similar to Gmail and Google Docs are harder to advance by, but they both have hundreds of millions of worldwide users.

This on its own is sincerely shocking, but not all that surprising. Personally, we think Google already did this – we mean, if your whole firm is formed on targeted advertising, commingling all of your information creates full blurb sense. If we blend two other factors in to the equation, however, it rapidly becomes strong that Google is FUBAR.

First, you can’t opt out of these changes. Basically, on Mar 1, Google is mixing 60 out of its 70 privacy policies to form a Main Privacy Policy, that mandates the pity of information between services. If you use one of these 60 services (which includes roughly all solely Google Chrome), there is no choice for you to go on using the aged privacy process that existed when you sealed up. If you have a Google account, you contingency agree to this new privacy process if you wish to go on using Gmail, Docs, and so on. You contingency enable Google to share your information between its services.

Second, it was only two weeks ago that Google incited on Search Plus Your World (SPYW), a massive compliance of its hunting engine that heavily biases amicable calm from Google+ . You will have no skepticism beheld that, by default, Google right away pollutes your hunting results with images, likes, and shares from your Google+ Circles. Meanwhile, of course, Google+ is right away front and core opposite roughly all of Google’s websites, and on gain calls Larry Page is showing off that the fledgling amicable network right away has 90 million users (though of march he gives no denote of how many every day users it has, or either the rendezvous is wherever shut to Facebook).

Now, it’s without doubt where Google is going with this: It wants to be more similar to Facebook and Apple, both of that have a completely-unified, walled-garden draw close – and both of that are enjoying outrageous leaps in income and profits, whilst Google falls partial of quarterly expectations. Nothing happens on an Apple device without Cupertino’s knowledge, and as a outcome Apple can immaculately tailor its gadgets for its users (and toothed wheel up record-breaking quarterly gain in the process). Facebook – since all is centralized beneath the facebook.com domain – enjoys rare access to the surfing habits, likes, shares, and messages of its users. On the other side of the fence, with a slew of discordant, disconnected properties, Google seems to be flailing. SPYW and the Mar 1 privacy changes are simply the next step in Google’s (rather messy) endeavor to wobble all together, before it loses any more ground.

If you wish confirmation, here’s what Larry Page – Google’s CEO – reportedly mentioned at a staff eventuality celebrating the launch of SPYW:

“This is the trail we’re headed down ” a singular unified, ‘beautiful’ product opposite everything. If you do not obtain that, then you should may work someplace else.”

According to Pando Daily , this final warning and the full corporate about-turn that SPYW represents has already resulted in Googlers journey the firm for more pleasing climes. Remember, Google built its whole sovereignty on a hunting engine that espoused relevancy on top of all else. Google’s unaccepted corporate sign – “don’t be evil” – is meant to remind Googlers that the consumer, rsther than than the shareholder, is king. With SPYW, Page’s authoritarian declaration, and the arriving privacy-destroying switch-throw on Mar 1, Google has sole its essence to the entrepreneur devil.

In other words, Google has pushed in all of its chips in an epic bet to beat Facebook at its own game. Google has deserted its bread and butter in hunting of greener, tighter-targeted, socially-relevant pastures. The thing is, though, Google doesn’t obviously have a choice in the matter. Going amicable is the right play. Indexed hunting has peaked. Apps – be it web apps or local mobile apps – are the future, and the only way to index them is by amicable sentiment, that Google can’t currently do… until it links all of its services together on Mar 1.

Why is Google FUBAR, then? Because it is satirical the palm that feeds it. Indexed hunting might have peaked, but it’s still huge, and still propelled Google to over $10 billion in income this past quarter. To turn Facebook, Google contingency leave roughly all that brought it success in the initial place. It contingency irreparably adjust its navy of successful web properties to turn more Facebooky . It contingency divide users with weird, ungooglesque features. It contingency force Chrome and Google+ down the throats of users who are simply seeking for a smart hunting engine.

The trail towards Facebookness is diligent with strife. Facebook, as the obligatory with roughly a billion active users, has a outrageous head start. Facebook can pull onwards, go on to reap the indeed staggering power of its network effect, and innovate without user backlash. Google on the other palm right away has to outlay the next year or two maneuvering its gribbly juggernaut between anti-trust, satisfactory trade, and privacy allegations – all whilst perplexing to keep the users cheerful with a hunting engine that’s no improved than Bing. Google is FUBAR.