王者之争：Facebook与谷歌决战未来

从许多方面来看，Google+就是拉里?佩奇的社交网站。Google+的开发工作早在佩奇担任公司CEO之前便已经开始，但他从一开始就密切关注项目的进展。最初几个月里，佩奇每周五上午11点都会参加项目团队的每周产品评测会议。为了密切跟踪项目进度，佩奇甚至把办公室和高管团队的主力都搬到Google+团队所在的大楼。他为项目提供了大量的资源，使其成为谷歌诞生13年以来最大规模的一次工程投入。此外，他还将刚铎提拔为公司高级副总裁，直接对他负责。佩奇还将数千名谷歌员工的一部分奖金与公司在社交业务上的表现挂钩。     Google+也是佩奇为使谷歌恢复曾经的灵活、负责的态度而进行的第一次尝试，同时也是为了避免陷入“创新者的窘境”，这个曾经使许多成功的公司深陷困境的顽症。在Google+项目中，公司抛弃了以往放任自流，甚至是无秩序的创新方式，代之以自上而下的方式。谷歌另外一位联合创始人谢尔盖?布林表示，允许“百花齐放”对谷歌依然非常重要，但“在所有花都绽放之后，你会希望能把它们收集起来，做成紧凑的花束。”     谷歌要实现在社交领域的野心或许确实需要一些这样的铁律。谷歌之前对Facebook领地进行的几次攻势均铩羽而归。2004年，几乎在Facebook面世的同时，谷歌就推出了第一个社交网站Orkut，但目前除了在巴西市场，Orkut网站早已被人遗忘。2007年，为了对抗Facebook，谷歌联合Myspace和其他社交网站，推出了社交网站开放式平台Open Social，结果也以失败而告终。两年后，谷歌又推出了Wave，但仅仅几个月之后便被打入冷宫。2010年，谷歌推出Buzz，试图将Gmail用户强行拉入社交网站，但很快这便成为谷歌在社交领域中的最大败笔：Buzz将人们的Gmail联系人公开给其他人，导致美国联邦贸易委员会（Federal Trade Commission）介入调查，并强制要求谷歌修改其隐私政策，同时必须接受政府监控，时长为20年。     Buzz的惨败让谷歌警醒。谷歌内部一些最具影响力的工程师开始提出，社交网络将给谷歌带来致命的威胁。随着网络开始以人为核心，尤其是围绕Facebook的人际关系图进行重建，谷歌的影响力将被逐渐侵蚀，最终被时代所抛弃。这种论调让谷歌高层大为光火，于是，一个雄心勃勃的项目很快出炉。这个名为翡翠海（Emerald Sea）的项目不仅要让谷歌成为Facebook的强劲对手，而且要围绕社交媒体对谷歌现有的产品进行改革。（刚铎选择翡翠海作为项目代号，预示着全新的海岸线与暴怒的海水并存。）     经过一年多的酝酿，今年6月份，谷歌终于推出了Google+。结果如何？这个社交网站针对用户的喜好，从Facebook中汲取精华，去除糟粕。你会发现Google+的主页与个人资料页、照片与游戏标签，当然还有无休止的好友更新都与Facebook非常类似。谷歌+1键的作用类似于Facebook的Like键。不过，Facebook一直因肆意践踏用户的隐私选择权而颇受指责，于是Google+则使用户可以自行决定其所发布内容的查看权限。Facebook无法清晰地将同事、同学和好友分开，而Google+则推出圈子功能，用户可以很直观地将关注对象进行分类。Zynga等应用开发商在Facebook平台上获得的收入，30%将属于Facebook所有，而Google+表示，目前其抽取的比例仅为5%。自从Google+推出以来，谷歌推出了100多个新功能，而且，佩奇表示未来还将推出更多新功能。在硅谷，几乎所有人都曾认为，谷歌根本无法与Facebook竞争，但Google+的表现却让所有人——包括Facebook的忠实拥趸——大跌眼镜。乔?格林就表示：“Google+非常出色。”乔?格林是扎克伯格在哈佛大学（Havard）的室友，他创办了慈善社交网站Causes，该网站开发的应用程序目前在Facebook上运行。     译者：阿龙/乔树静

In many ways, Google+ is Larry Page's social network. Early work on Google+ predated Page's ascent to the top post, but he has been intimately involved with the project from the start. In the initial months, Page dropped by every Friday at 11 a.m. for the group's weekly product reviews. To keep close tabs, Page moved his office and much of the executive suite to the building where the Google+ team was sequestered. He blessed the project with massive resources, making it one of the largest engineering endeavors Google has undertaken in its 13-year history, and he elevated Gundotra to the post of senior vice president, reporting directly to him. Page also tied a portion of the bonuses of thousands of Googlers to how well the company did in social.     Google+ is also the first test of Page's plan to transform Google into the nimbler, more accountable company it once was, and in the process avoid the Innovators' Dilemma, the paralysis that grips so many successful companies. In the Google+ project, the company's freewheeling and sometimes chaotic approach to innovation was cast aside -- replaced with a more top-down style. Allowing a thousand flowers to bloom may still be important at Google, says Sergey Brin, the other co-founder, but "once they do bloom, you want to put together a coherent bouquet."     Maybe some discipline is what Google's social ambitions needed. Google's previous attacks on Facebook's turf were an embarrassment. Orkut, Google's first social network, was born alongside Facebook in 2004 but is largely irrelevant outside of Brazil. Open Social, a Google-led effort in 2007 to rally MySpace and other social networks into an alliance to balance the clout of Facebook, flopped. Two years later Google introduced Wave, only to kill it after a few months, and Buzz, a 2010 attempt to shoehorn Gmail users into a social network, quickly turned into Google's biggest social faux pas: Buzz exposed people's Gmail contacts to others, triggering a Federal Trade Commission investigation that forced Google to revamp its privacy policies and accept government monitoring for 20 years.     The Buzz fiasco was a wake-up call at Google. Some of its most high-profile engineers started making the case that the social web posed a vital threat to Google. As the web was being rebuilt around people -- and, in particular, around Facebook's graph of human relationships -- Google could end up on the sidelines, its relevance eroding by the day. The message rattled Google's top brass, and an ambitious project -- called Emerald Sea -- not only to create a credible rival to Facebook but also to transform Google's existing products around social media, quickly took shape. (Gundotra picked the name Emerald Sea to suggest both new horizons and stormy waters.)     After more than a year of gestation, Google finally introduced Google+ in June. The result? A social network that cloned much of what people like about Facebook and eliminated much of what they hate about Facebook. You'll find familiar home and profile pages, tabs for photos and games, and of course the endless updates from friends. Google's +1 button works much like Facebook's Like. But where Facebook is perpetually accused of running roughshod over people's privacy preferences, Google+ made it very easy to decide who can see what users post on the site. Facebook lacked a good way to separate workmates from classmates from real friends, so Google+ was built around Circles, an intuitive way to group people in buckets. Facebook takes 30% of the revenue that app developers like Zynga make on its platform, so Google+ said it would take only 5% for now. Since the launch, Google has rolled out more than 100 new features, and Page says there is much more to come. In Silicon Valley, where everyone had given up on the idea that Google could compete with Facebook, Google+ caught everyone -- including Facebook loyalists -- by surprise. "Google+ was impressive," says Joe Green, one of Zuckerberg's Harvard roommates and the founder of Causes, an application built to run on Facebook.

网络向社交化的转变在方方面面改变着公司和消费者。最先受到冲击的行业包括广告业。目前，美国310亿美元在线广告市场中，谷歌的份额达到41%，而且在搜索广告市场，谷歌一直雄踞榜首。但搜索广告的增长正在放缓，广告商开始将有限的资金投放到Facebook。毕竟，Facebook拥有8亿用户，而且许多用户在Facebook上停留的时间远远超过其他网站。（见页底图表）预计今年Facebook的显示广告收入将增长81%，而谷歌显示广告收入的增长幅度预计为34%。虽然谷歌和Facebook让我们认为两家公司仍有无限的成长空间，但千万不要被这种假象所迷惑。正如美国投资银行Stifel Nicolaus的分析师乔丹?罗翰所说：“如果谷歌与Facebook不直接交锋，抢占对方的市场份额，它们根本不可能达到投资者的期望，在显示广告市场实现数十亿美元的增长幅度。”     现在的佩奇就像十几年前的比尔?盖茨，他发现公司对科技世界的统治力正在下降。所以他决定反击，投入巨大的精力争夺社交网络市场。佩奇成为谷歌CEO后的第一把火便是推出Google+，加大财力和工程力量的投入，对Facebook的领地展开攻势。其实Google+并非谷歌在社交网络进行的首次尝试，但却是谷歌第一款没有遭到业界嘲弄的社交产品。谷歌称，仅仅四个月内，Google +的注册用户便达到4,000万人。而在另一方，扎克伯格也非常清楚，自从Facebook轻松超越MySpace成为全球最大的社交网站以来，Google+是Facebook遇到的第一个真正意义上的威胁。（对Facebook而言，这不仅仅是荣誉之争：如果公司的光环受到威胁，将会影响其期待已久的首次公开招股。预计公司IPO规模将超过800亿美元。）于是，在Google+发布后不久，扎克伯格便在总部紧急挂出粉红色霓虹灯信号，上面写着“戒备状态”，目的是要提醒员工需要不分昼夜，加班加点，借鉴Google+中最受欢迎的部分功能。     但防守并非扎克伯格的风格。今年9月，在公司的F8开发者大会上，他推出了海量的新功能，旨在从根本上提高目前的服务水平。而且，预计公司最终将会推出一个广告网络，管理所有社交行为，帮助广告商在网络中更有效地锁定目标客户。如果这一策略得到完美执行，将会进一步威胁谷歌在在线广告领域中的霸主地位。     所以，当大多数用户轻松游走于Gmail账户和在Facebook订阅的新闻资讯之间时，在旧金山半岛的核心地段，正在进行一场激烈的战争。今年夏天，扎克伯格为愿意在周末加班的员工提供免费食物。而佩奇则催促他的团队以近乎疯狂的速度为Google+添加新功能：在前90天内推出了100个新功能。他们现在的决定，包括产品发布、广告推广等，将会决定最终的胜者。     谷歌     拉里?佩奇很不高兴。当时是去年春天的一个周末，38岁的佩奇正在安卓（Android）手机上试用Google+的早期样品。他发现把拍摄的照片发布到Google+中的程序过于繁琐。于是他打电话向谷歌社交业务负责人维克?刚铎抱怨。刚铎向他解释了Google+团队为什么要采取那种方法，试图说服他。但佩奇坚持认为，照片应该一键上传。在谷歌，佩奇的要求都会得到满足。于是，刚铎命令团队重新设计照片上传功能，现在，佩奇对这项技术赞不绝口。近期，他向外界描述通过安卓系统向Google+发布照片是多么简单：“这绝对是神奇的体验。”

This shift to a more social web changes everything for businesses and consumers alike. Among the first industries to be rocked: advertising. Google may capture 41% of today's $31 billion U.S. online advertising market, including the lion's share of the search-ad market. But growth in search advertising is slowing, and advertisers are putting more of their limited dollars into Facebook, with its 800 million users, many of whom spend more time on Facebook than on any other site. (See chart at the bottom of the page) Facebook's display-ad revenue is expected to grow 81% this year, while Google's display-ad dollars will rise an estimated 34%. Google and Facebook would have you believe there is room for each to drive forward with unlimited success, but don't be fooled. As Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan explains, "It's highly unlikely that either Google or Facebook could grow by the billions that investors expect in the display market without engaging directly and stealing market share from the other."     Like Bill Gates a decade or so earlier, Page is seeing his company's grip on the tech world loosening. So he's fighting back with a mammoth effort to grab a piece of the social web. His first substantial act as Google's new CEO was to amp up the considerable financial and engineering mojo the company had aimed at Facebook's turf by releasing Google+. It's not Google's first social initiative, but it's the one that folks aren't laughing at, and Google says 40 million people have signed up in only four months. Across town Zuckerberg knows Google+ is the first credible threat Facebook has faced since it sailed past MySpace to become the world's No. 1 social network. (For Facebook there are more than bragging rights at stake: Anything that tarnishes its halo could impact its long-awaited initial public offering with a valuation that is expected to top $80 billion.) Not surprisingly, shortly after Google+ made its debut, Zuckerberg flipped on a pink neon sign at headquarters with the word lockdown, signaling that employees were on notice to work around the clock on, among other things, replicating some of the most praised Google+ features.     But defensive moves are not Zuckerberg's style, and in September, at the company's F8 developers event, he unleashed a sea of new features that alter the current service radically. And it's expected the company will launch an ad network eventually that will harness all those social actions to help advertisers target consumers better across the web. Smartly deployed, it could further threaten Google's position as the king of online advertising.     So while most of us spend our days casually toggling back and forth between our Gmail accounts and our Facebook newsfeeds, down in the heart of the San Francisco Peninsula it's war. Zuckerberg served free food this summer to willing workers on the weekends. Page is pushing his team to add features to Google+ at a furious pace: more than 100 in the first 90 days. The decisions that are being made right now -- product launches, advertising plays -- will determine which company prevails.     Google     Larry Page was not pleased. It was a weekend day last spring, and Page, 38, was playing around with an early prototype of Google+ on his Android phone. He found it too cumbersome to post photos he had just taken. He called Vic Gundotra, Google's social czar, to complain. Gundotra tried to push back, explaining why the Google+ team decided on the approach it had taken. Page insisted that photos be uploaded with one click. At Google, what Page asks for, he gets. Gundotra ordered his team to rebuild the photo-uploading feature, and Page now gushes about the technology. "It is a totally magical experience," he said recently, as he described how easy it is to post photos from Android to Google+.

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保罗?亚当斯在硅谷炙手可热。他是一位才华横溢的产品设计师，戴着方框眼镜，说话带有浓重的爱尔兰口音，疯狂崇拜激情四溢的技术狂人。作为谷歌（Google）顶尖的社交网络研究员，谷歌新社交网站Google+背后的理念很大程度上便出自他的创意：Google+中灵活的“圈子”功能使用户可以轻松把好友分成“挚友”或“大学哥们”。但他并未能在谷歌将自己的理念推向消费者。在去年12月的一场天才争夺战中，他选择加盟位于帕洛阿尔托以东10英里的Facebook，帮助其设计社交广告。对此，亚当斯在博客中解释道：“谷歌重视的是技术，而不是社交。”     科技公司之间相互竞争的情况由来已久，但很少有像谷歌与Facebook这两个网络豪强之间的竞争如此激烈和残酷。为了争取像亚当斯这样的人才，吸引用户眼球，争夺广告收入，它们会不惜一切代价。虽然两家公司并未像甲骨文（Oracle）与惠普（HP）般公开诋毁挑衅，也没有如微软（Microsoft）与网景（Netscape）般明刀明枪地交火，但双方都为竞争投入了巨大的筹码。两家公司都希望成为未来网络的主宰——而最终的结果将会影响我们获取信息、沟通以及进行交易的方式。     Facebook与谷歌：王者之争     交战一方Facebook是社交网络中的“王者”，希望巩固自己的地位，掌握所有人的网络生活。而另一方谷歌则控制着全球的海量信息，引领人们的搜索方式，它希望在互联网从超链接时代向以人为本转变的过程中保持自己的统治地位。     谷歌联合创始人兼CEO拉里?佩奇（4月份上任）仅比Facebook的马克?扎克伯格年长11岁，但他们却属于不同的网络一代，并且拥有截然不同的世界观。在佩奇的世界里，一切均从搜索开始。用户通过搜索来查看新闻，查找钟爱的鞋子，追踪最喜爱的名人动态。如果需要了解医院的医疗条件或决定需要购买的电视型号，用户首先要进行搜索。而且在这一领域，谷歌的程序经过十多年的改进已经如鱼得水。但近几年，网络世界却在逐渐向扎克伯格的世界倾斜，这种变革甚至堪称残酷。在扎克伯格的世界里，我们不再通过搜索获得新闻，而是等着朋友来告诉我们新鲜资讯，告诉我们他们喜欢的电影，钟爱的品牌，甚至去那里吃美味的寿司。     现在，Facebook已经成为新互联网世界的核心，很多人一天的在线生活也是从这里开始。而Facebook成功的秘诀在于让公司在网络中传播，并允许他人分享用户的朋友圈子。结果，成千上万个网站和应用像卫星一样，围绕着Facebook运行。我们可以打开点评网站Yelp查看好友如何评价街边新开的咖啡厅，到在线音乐服务网站Spotify，让好友帮我们挑选音乐，或者与好友一起玩社交游戏公司Zynga开发的游戏。而对于佩奇来说，更糟糕的是谷歌的程序根本无法捕捉这些社交活动，导致这种程序，甚至于谷歌搜索本身的精确性日益下降，进而日益与人们的生活脱节。

Paul Adams is one of Silicon Valley's most wanted. He's an intellectually minded product designer with square-framed glasses, a thick Irish accent, and a cult following of passionate techies. As one of Google's lead social researchers, he helped dream up the big idea behind the company's new social network, Google+: those flexible circles that let you group friends easily under monikers like "real friends" or "college buddies." He never got to help bring his concept to consumers, though. In a master talent grab last December, Facebook lured him 10 miles east to Palo Alto to help design social advertisements. On his blog, Adams explained, "Google values technology, not social science."     In the long history of tech rivalries, rarely has there been a battle as competitive as the raging war between the web's wonder twins. They will stop at nothing to win over whip-smart folks like Adams, amass eyeballs, and land ad dollars. There's no public trash talking à la the Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) vs. HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) smackdown, nor are the battle lines drawn as clearly as they were when Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) took on Netscape, but the stakes are immense. These companies are fighting to see which of them will determine the future of the web -- and the outcome will affect the way we get information, communicate, and buy and sell.     Facebook and Google: Head-to-Head     In one corner is Facebook, the reigning champion of the social web, trying to cement its position as the owner of everyone's online identity. In the other is Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), the company that organized the world's information and showed us how to find it, fighting to remain relevant as the Internet of hyperlinks gives way to an Internet of people.     Although Larry Page, Google's co-founder and its CEO since April, was born just 11 years before Mark Zuckerberg, his counterpart at Facebook, the two belong to different Internet generations with different worldviews. In Page's web, everything starts with a search. You search for news or for a pair of shoes or to keep up with your favorite celebrity. If you want to learn about a medical condition or decide which television to buy, you search. In that world, Google's algorithms, honed over more than a decade, respond almost perfectly. But in recent years the web has tilted gradually, and perhaps inexorably, toward Zuckerberg's world. There, rather than search for a news article, you wait for your friends to tell you what to read. They tell you what movies they enjoyed, what brands they like, and where to eat sushi.     Facebook is squarely at the center of this new universe, and much of what people do online these days starts there. But Facebook's masterstroke has been to spread itself across the web and allow others to tap your network of friends. As a result, thousands of websites and apps have essentially become satellites that orbit around Facebook. You can now go to Yelp to find out what your Facebook friends say about the new coffeehouse down the street, visit Spotify to let them pick music playlists for you, or play Zynga games with them. To make matters worse for Page, much of this social activity can't be seen by Google's web-trolling algorithms, so every day they (and by extension, Google) become a little bit less accurate and relevant.

Facebook严阵以待     直到最近，Google+上最受欢迎的人还是马克?扎克伯格，他已经拥有598,000名粉丝，而且数字还在增长。但到目前为止，他并未发布任何公共信息，而且他根本就不希望讨论Google+。在7月份的一次活动上，当被追问关于Google+的看法时，他认为“Google+只是进一步验证了未来5年网络的发展趋势”。（言下之意似乎是：他们只是在抄袭我们而已。)     但在今年夏季的封闭研发期间，位于帕洛阿尔托市的Facebook总部内气氛紧张。超过750名工程师加班加点，他们忙碌的身影经常在扎克伯格坐镇的小型玻璃会议室外往来穿梭；而近年来，这种情形在Facebook仅出现过一次。当时是2010年夏天，外界盛传谷歌正在开发“Facebook杀手”，于是扎克伯格要求工程师们加班加点工作60天，优化网站的关键社交功能，如照片、群组和活动等。而与当时一样，今年夏天，Facebook的餐厅在晚上和周末对员工开放，员工的孩子可以到这里用餐，然后与父母道晚安——因为他们的父母还要工作到很晚。到今年9月份，Facebook发布了一系列新功能，例如可以与Google+的圈子功能媲美的群组工具。Facebook产品与研发团队的一位成员就表示：“【谷歌】可能会在社交项目上投入巨额资金和海量人力。所以，Facebook的所有人都感觉：情况非常严重，我们应该严肃对待。”     这种焦虑情绪不仅仅表现在推动Facebook开发出更好的产品， Facebook甚至秘密聘请博雅公关公司（Burson-Marsteller）在报纸和博客上发表了一系列批评谷歌的文章，但这样拙劣的举措结果却适得其反，因为媒体很快就发现Facebook是博雅公关的客户。虽然Facebook声称此举是出于公司对谷歌违反隐私政策行为的担忧，但它却因为自己糟糕的判断力率先成为众矢之的。     但具有讽刺意义的是，Facebook和谷歌一方面都希望尽可能为各自的广告商挖掘尽可能多的用户个人信息，但同时双方又一直在“保护用户隐私”方面苦苦挣扎。我们可能对Zappos网站上的一双鞋发表了评论，或是在状态栏里更新了未来婚礼计划的信息。而Facebook却能根据这些信息将我们引导至可能需要的商品广告上， 于是许多大公司纷纷将Facebook平台作为在网络上进行大规模品牌宣传活动的首选。因此，虽然Facebook目前的广告收入远比不上谷歌，但其增长速度却快得多。据美国市场研究公司eMarketer预计，今年Facebook的广告收入将飙升至43亿美元，较去年的20亿美元增长一倍多。而相比而言，分析师预测谷歌今年广告收入的增长幅度仅为30%，约为380亿美元。     如何让更多用户在Facebook上消磨更多时间，与Facebook好友分享更多信息，进而积累更多数据？目前，扎克伯格正被这一问题所困扰。在今年9月举行的F8大会上，他发布了一项被称为“时间线”的功能，用来取代Facebook逐渐落伍的个人资料页面。扎克伯格对这一功能的解释是：“想象一下，这就像是你正在讲述自己的人生经历一样。”为了清楚地演示这一功能，他以自己的Facebook时间线为例作为说明。这是一个垂直的时间轴，追溯了他的人生经历，其中按顺序列出了他在网站上发布的所有帖子，通过这些帖子，他一生中所有最重要的时刻一目了然；同时，这一功能促使他发布了大量的帖子和照片来追溯人生，一直回溯到1984年5月14日。帖子写到：出生于多布斯费里，纽约。实际上，扎克伯格计划引导用户将Facebook变成个人生活的数字剪贴本。我们不妨设想一下，假如用户要补上个人在Facebook诞生之前数十年间的生活片段，他们将要花多少时间上传照片，整理活动记录。

Facebook     Until recently, the most popular person on Google+, with 598,000 followers and counting, was Mark Zuckerberg. But he has yet to make a public post, and indeed he'd prefer not to discuss Google+ at all. When pressed at a July event, he called it only a "validation as to how the next five years are going to play out." (Translation: Uh, they're copying us.)     However, inside the Palo Alto office where more than 750 engineers regularly pass by the small glass conference room in which Zuckerberg, 27, holds court, Facebook employees put in some serious overtime during the summer lockdown. This had happened only once before in recent years at Facebook: After word leaked that Google was starting work on a "Facebook killer" in summer 2010, Zuckerberg called on engineers to work nights and weekends for 60 days to revamp key social features like photos, groups, and events. Just as it did then, the cafeteria opened up on evenings and weekends this summer, and children dropped in for dinners and good-night hugs before their parents logged back on for late nights. By September, Facebook had released a slew of new features like better grouping tools to mirror those Google+ circles. Says one member of the product and engineering team: "[Google] can throw all the money in the world, including hundreds of people, at this. So people were, like, This is serious, and we should take it seriously."     That anxiety wasn't simply channeled into building a better product. In May, Facebook secretly hired public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to plant anti-Google stories in papers and blogs, a ham-fisted move that backfired when journalists discovered Facebook was Burson's client. The company defended its concerns about Google's privacy violations but took the flak for bad judgment.     The irony, of course, is that Facebook and Google both are in a constant struggle to respect users' privacy while mining as much personal information as possible for the companies' advertisers. All that social information we plug into Facebook when we "like" a pair of shoes on Zappos or update our status about future wedding plans helps the company serve us up ads for things we're more likely to want. This has made Facebook into the go-to advertising platform for big marketers hoping to do brand advertising at scale on the web. As a result, even though Facebook's revenue is minuscule compared with Google's, it is growing at a much faster rate. It is expected to surge to $4.3 billion this year, or more than double the $2 billion it had last year, according to eMarketer. In contrast, analysts predict that Google's revenue will grow just 30%, to $38 billion.     Zuckerberg is obsessed with figuring out how to amass more data by getting more people to spend more time sharing more things with their Facebook friends. At the F8 event in September, he unveiled something called a timeline to replace Facebook's aging profile pages. "Imagine expressing the story of your life," Zuckerberg explained. To demonstrate, he popped up his own Facebook timeline, where a vertical line scrolled backward through his personal history, curating all the posts he'd ever made on the site to bring to the surface the most important items and encouraging him to add posts and photos going all the way back to the May 14, 1984, post: Born, Dobbs Ferry, New York. In effect, Zuckerberg plans to coax us into making Facebook our living digital scrapbooks. Imagine the hours users may log uploading photos and labeling events from the lost decades B.F. (Before Facebook).

但Facebook在F8会议上最大胆的举措并不是上述功能更新，而是在社交层面进一步与Netflix和Spotify等其他服务进行整合。现在，如果用户希望注册Spotify，就必须提供他们的Facebook账户信息。而这一点对用户来说，有利的一面是可以在Spotify或Facebook上直接找到和收听朋友的播放列表，而不利的一面则是自己的音乐偏好将被公之于众（例如，肖恩?帕克正在收听Florence + the Machine乐队的音乐）。而随着时间的推移，这类新的数据可能蕴藏着巨大的商业价值。虽然现在许多网络出版商允许用户选择是否在Facebook上公开自己的动态，比如他们读过的文章，或他们购买的鞋子等，但多数用户都会跳过这一步。而在新的模式下，共享成为了一种选择性退出，而不是选择性进入。由此，Facebook可以突然之间获得大量的用户在线行为信息，并最终利用这些数据来出售更有针对性的线上和线下广告。 如果说谷歌AdWords和AdSense广告平台是目前帮助广告客户找到大量有采购目标的受众，那么社交广告的用途则是用来帮助人们发现新的事物。 战火硝烟四起     10月末的一天，科技博客界因为社交网络领域的一则新闻而沸沸扬扬：扎克伯格不再是Google+上拥有粉丝最多的用户。是谁取代了他呢？这个人正是佩奇。虽然看起来这不足为奇，但不难想象谷歌总部肯定为此窃喜不已。无论是谷歌还是Facebook都不愿谈论双方之间的竞争（因此他们也不愿意CEO们就本文置评），但实际上，双方已经在很多方面展开较量，哪怕是一次小小的胜利都会让他们弹冠相庆。     两家公司对人才的争夺或许是衡量两者竞争最直观的指标，双方工程师或者高管跳槽到对方的情况很容易统计。而这方面的竞争呈一边倒的趋势。Facebook内部从高管到底层实习生，来自谷歌的人比比皆是，其中就包括谷歌原社交项目研究员亚当斯。在Facebook的11位高管中，有4位来自谷歌，包括现任COO谢丽尔?桑德伯格以及负责广告和运营业务的大卫?菲舍尔。     但这些数据只不过是双方竞争的缩影。早在2007年，双方的竞争便已拉开序幕，随后便愈演愈烈。Facebook有什么致命武器？它是硅谷最炙手可热的公司，同时在未来上市后可以创造大批百万富翁，这些是它吸引人才的王牌。而谷歌则投入巨额资金予以还击。一位曾亲身经历双方人才争夺战的高管表示，谷歌甚至许诺，如果顶尖的工程师或高管留守公司，他们将可获得超过价值1,000万美元的股票和现金。很快，这些消息不胫而走，许多谷歌员工理所当然会采取行动：他们先拿到Facebook 的入职通知，然后转过头来以此要求谷歌大幅加薪。近期从谷歌跳槽的一位高管说：“这种情况就造成了一种‘非谷歌式’的环境。人们开始‘良禽择木而栖’。”于是在今年1月，谷歌推出了不同的措施，给所有员工全部加薪10%，并且将大部分员工的奖金计入基础工资。由此，许多谷歌员工的薪金增加了15%，甚至20%。     如果说在人才争夺战中，谷歌处于守势，在吸引用户眼球方面它则是攻势如潮，其最有力的武器是在互联网领域的主导地位。例如，经过90天的试运行后，今年9月份，Google+完全向用户开放，而谷歌为此采取的推广措施连一些大公司都艳羡不已：谷歌在其主页上放置了一个大大的蓝色箭头，将数千万用户引导至Google+图标，使Google+的流量迅猛上升。除主页外，谷歌还计划在Gmail、谷歌地图以及YouTube等服务的庞大用户群中不分昼夜地推广Google+，并将Google+服务整合到数百万台Android手机中。Twitter首席执行官迪克?科斯托罗也表示：“毋庸置疑，Google+肯定会吸引到大量用户。”     Facebook最担心的自然便是谷歌吸引用户的能力。尽管Facebook的高管多年以来一直表示，他们有信心在公平竞争环境中击败谷歌，但他们也担心微软之前的一幕将会重演，即谷歌并不会与Facebook公平竞争，而是会利用其在互联网领域的主导地位来推广Google+。而且在谷歌网站上推广Google+不仅非常有效，而且也无可非议。但如果谷歌利用其搜索引擎来力推Google+并打压其他社交网站服务，则可能产生争议。虽然谷歌还未采取这种措施来推广Google+，但它之前在推广谷歌地图等其他服务时便曾这样做过，导致竞争对手大呼不平。如果谷歌今后希望采取这种措施，必须三思而行，因为公司已经在接受政府的反垄断调查。而在移动领域，谷歌可能在Android手机和平板电脑上内置多个Google+功能，进而增加对手的竞争难度。

But the boldest move at F8 was not Zuckerberg's flashy redesign but rather deeper social integration with other services like Netflix (NFLX) and Spotify. To register for Spotify, newcomers must now use their Facebook credentials. The upside is that you can find and listen to your friends' playlists on Spotify or on Facebook directly. The downside is your musical tastes are revealed to the world (i.e., Sean Parker is listening to Florence + the Machine). This new stream of social data could prove invaluable over time. Until now, although many web publishers offered users the option to publish their actions -- articles they read, shoes they buy -- on Facebook, most people took a pass. In the new model, sharing becomes opt-out rather than opt-in, and Facebook could become the sudden recipient of a good deal more information about what we do online. Eventually, the company could use the data to sell even more targeted ads both on and off the site. If Google's AdWords and AdSense are the de facto tools for helping advertisers reach large numbers of people who know what they're looking for, social ads will be the tool for helping people discover new things. The war     One day in late October, tech blogs started buzzing about the latest bit of news on the social web: Zuckerberg had lost his place as the most followed Google+ user. Who edged him out? None other than Larry Page. Trivial, perhaps, but it's hard not to think that the news lit up smiles across the Googleplex. Neither Google nor Facebook likes to talk about competing with each other (and neither company would make their CEOs available for this story), but battles are raging on multiple fronts, and both sides celebrate even the smallest victory.     Nowhere is keeping score easier than in the battle for talent, where every engineer or executive who defects from one company or the other is easily tabulated. On that front the battle has been a lopsided affair. Look through the ranks of Facebook, from upper management to lowly interns, and you'll bump into ex-Googlers like Adams, the social researcher, at every turn. Four of Facebook's 11 top executives hail from Google, including COO Sheryl Sandberg and David Fischer, the advertising and operations chief.     These numbers, however, don't tell the full story of a battle that began as far back as 2007 and has only intensified since. Facebook's weapons of choice? Its cachet as the hottest Valley company -- and its potential to mint millionaires when it finally goes public. Google has fought back with money, lots of it. In some cases Google offered top engineers or execs more than $10 million in equity and cash if they stayed, said an executive directly involved in the talent wars. Word spread quickly, and many Googlers did what rational people would do: They got an offer from Facebook just so they could get a big raise at Google. "It created an un-Googley environment," says a senior manager who left Google recently. "They like to be merit-based." So in January, Google tried a different approach: It lavished a giant 10% raise on its entire workforce. It also shifted a large chunk of employee bonuses into base pay. As a result, many people saw their paychecks increase by 15% or even 20%.     But if Google is playing defense on the talent war, it is clearly playing offense in the battle for eyeballs. Its most powerful weapon is its status as the dominant Internet company. In September, for example, when it opened up Google+ to everyone, following a 90-day trial period, it unleashed the kind of promotion that even the biggest brands would envy: A large blue arrow on its homepage pointed the tens of millions who visit it daily to a Google+ tab. Traffic on the site spiked immediately. In addition to Google.com, Google plans to promote Google+, day in and day out, to the hundreds of millions of people who use services like Gmail, Maps, and YouTube; and to weave it into millions of Android handsets. Says Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter: "There is no doubt they are going to be able to pull in massive numbers of users."     Naturally, it's Google's power to pull in those users that worries Facebook the most. For years executives there have said that they are confident they can beat Google on a level playing field. But they fear that, like Microsoft in an earlier era, Google will use its power to peddle Google+, and not always fairly. Some tactics, like promotions on Google.com, are effective and uncontroversial. Others, like Google's ability to use its search engine to promote Google+ ahead of other social services, could prove more problematic. Google has not yet done so with Google+, but it has done just that with other services, like its maps, prompting rivals to cry foul. Google may think twice before engaging in such tactics, as it is already under a government antitrust investigation. Yet with mobile as the next battleground, Google may also find ways to build many Google+ features right into Android phones and tablets, making it harder for rivals to compete.

扎克伯格注意到了谷歌在移动领域的优势，因此转向谷歌在移动领域最大的竞争对手——苹果公司（Apple），开始加强双方的关系。据知情人士透露，Facebook与苹果已经进行了数轮磋商。或许是因为两家公司曾经的过节，目前双方尚未找到可行的合作方式。去年苹果曾试图将围绕iTunes建立的社交网站Ping与Facebook互联，但却被Facebook以所谓技术问题予以回绝。苹果公司很少会公开指责其他公司的行为，但此次史蒂夫?乔布斯甚至亲自召集媒体，表达了他的不满。此外，苹果在其最新版本的移动操作系统上选择了与Twitter合作，而不是Facebook，这也对双方的合作商谈产生不利影响。不过双方的磋商仍在继续，因为他们都清楚，结盟有助于对付共同的竞争对手谷歌。     也许你会问：假如这是一场战争，那么谁将是最终的赢家？这个问题非常复杂。谷歌的社交媒体业务有两个目标：一方面是遏制Facebook 的发展势头；另一方面则是利用Google+收集的数据来改善谷歌的搜索、地图服务和广告等业务。刚铎与佩奇都表示，后一个目标更为重要。刚铎称：“根据这个目标，我们可以进一步改善搜索体验，提高YouTube与Gmail的性能，并使广告更具相关性。Google+将帮助改善公司的所有业务。”     为了实现这个目标，谷歌并不需要打败Facebook，但它必须坐上社交领域名副其实的第二把交椅。如果说把谷歌与Facebook的关系比作赫兹租车公司（Hertz，全球最大的租车公司——译注）与安飞士汽车租赁公司(Avis，全球第二大租车公司——译注)，或许很离谱。搜索引擎技术网站Search Engine Land的编辑丹尼?苏利文称：“就目前的形势来看，谷歌更像是富田租车公司（Thrifty Car Rental）。”要爬到第二位，谷歌需要在社交领域加大投入。例如，今年10月，一家科技博客网站报道称，包括执行董事长埃里克?施密特在内的多位谷歌高管自己都还没有开通Google+账户。几天后，施密特的账户便悄然出现在Google+上。此外，谷歌还需要其他推动力，那就是提供不同于Facebook的价值定位，说服大量用户转投其阵营，或至少是同时成为这两家社交网站的活跃用户。目前，我们还无法知晓在Google+的4,000万账户中，有多少用户在实际使用该网站。谷歌自然不会透露这一数据。当被问及用户为什么应转投Google+时，谷歌高管一再表示，传统的在线共享功能已被颠覆（这话还是去跟Facebook的8亿用户说吧），而通过圈子功能，Google+用户可以分享他们在真实世界的任何活动（但Facebook现在也具备了这项功能）。     对于Facebook来说，Google+上线伊始的成功意味着一旦扎克伯格出现失误，后果将难以承受。过去Facebook经常出现产品失策和用户隐私泄露的问题，但基本都得到了外界的谅解，或者不了了之，公司并未遭到过多责难。从现在起，如果Facebook惹恼用户，Google+将很乐意接收他们，当然，他们的朋友也自不必说。因此，扎克伯格现在在继续前进的同时，还必须密切关注佩奇和谷歌的动向。扎克伯格也许可以对Facebook在用户总数上的领先感到欣慰，对成功挖到数十位谷歌高端人才窃喜不已，但佩奇在补充谷歌人员储备方面根本没有什么难度。在最近的这个季度，谷歌新增近2,600名员工，几乎相当于Facebook的员工总数。而新招募的员工肩负着一个明确的使命：将谷歌打造成为社交网络世界的超级巨头。     译者：阿龙/汪皓

That last point is not lost on Zuckerberg. It has prompted him to seek closer ties with Google's biggest rival in mobile: Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500). The two companies have held multiple rounds of discussions, according to people with knowledge of the talks. But they have yet to find a compelling way to collaborate, perhaps because their courtship got off to a rocky start. Last year Facebook rebuffed Apple's attempt to connect Ping, a new social network built around iTunes, with Facebook, purportedly for technical reasons. It was a rare public rebuke for Apple, and Steve Jobs personally called some reporters to voice his displeasure. That Apple chose to bake Twitter, not Facebook, into the most recent version of its mobile operating system has not helped. Still, the two companies continue to talk, knowing full well that an alliance could help them fend off a common enemy.     We know what you're probably thinking: If this is a war, who's going to win? The answer is not straightforward. Google has two goals with social media: One is to slow the momentum of Facebook; the other is to use data from Google+ to improve things like search, maps, and ads. Both Gundotra and Page say the latter goal is the more important one. "We can make search better," Gundotra says. "We can make YouTube and Gmail better. We can make our ads more relevant." He later adds: "Google+ will touch every aspect of Google."     To meet its goals, Google doesn't need to best Facebook, but it needs to become a credible No. 2. Think Avis to Facebook's Hertz. That's a ways off. "At this point, it's more like Thrifty Car Rental," says Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land. To get there, Google needs to drink even more of the social Kool-Aid than it has. Consider this: In October a tech blog reported that several top Google officials, including Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman, had not even set up their own accounts on Google+. A few days later Schmidt's account quietly appeared on the site. Google also needs something else: a value proposition that is different from Facebook's and that compels users to switch in large numbers -- or at least to be active on both sites. At this point, it is not clear how many of the 40 million people with Google+ accounts actually use the site. Google won't say. And when asked why anyone should switch to Google+, executives there say again and again that online sharing is broken (tell that to Facebook's 800 million members) and that with Circles, Google+ users can share as they do in the real world (never mind that Facebook has matched that capability).     For Facebook, the early successes of Google+ mean Zuckerberg can no longer afford to screw up. In the past, Facebook's frequent product missteps and privacy snafus were by and large forgiven or forgotten. From now on, Google+ will stand at the ready, more than happy to welcome any disgruntled Facebook users -- not to mention their friends. In other words, as he soldiers on, Zuckerberg must now keep an eye on Page and his troops. Yes, Zuckerberg may feel good about Facebook's gaping lead in users and about having poached dozens of Google's prized brainiacs. But Page has had no problem replenishing Google's ranks. In the most recent quarter, Google added nearly 2,600 employees. That's almost as many people as work at Facebook, and they have a clear mandate: to turn Google into a superpower of the social web.