Google, the king of Internet search but a bust on the social front, launched its rival to Facebook on June 28, a social networking service called Google+. "Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it," Google's senior vice president for engineering Vic Gundotra said in a blog post about the long-awaited social networking initiative.
Unveiling Google+, Gundotra stressed the ability it gives users to separate online friends and family into different "circles," or networks, and to share information only with members of a particular circle.
"We'd like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software," he said. "We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships and your interests."
One of the criticisms of Facebook is that updates are shared with all of one's friends unless a user has gone through a relatively complicated process to create separate groups. "Not all relationships are created equal," Gundotra said. "So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss.
"The problem is that today's online services turn friendship into fast food - wrapping everyone in 'friend' paper - and sharing really suffers," he continued. Google+, located at plus.google.com, is currently being tested by a small number of people or is available by invitation only. But Google said in a message on the site that it "won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone."
Google unveiled several new tools integrated into Google+, including "Hangouts," which allows for video chatting among friends, and "Huddle" for group text messaging.
Photos and video can be uploaded and shared among circles using a feature known as "Instant Upload," while an online sharing engine called "Sparks" delivers content from the Web into a user's feed.
Google dominates Internet search but the Mountain View, California, company has failed to make inroads on the social networking front, where Facebook has accumulated nearly 700 million users and Twitter around 200 million.