Facebook initially wasn't a novel technology - social networking sites had been around for nearly a decade when it was born out of the Harvard dorms. However, Facebook arguably became one of the most innovative web developments post dot-com when it announced it would open its site as a platform for third-party applications. A 2007 illustration of how this looks can be found at Idealog. Moreover, Facebook began adopting terminologies, functionality, and design principles from the desktop and web browser to home-grow a contained Web experience for its many fanatical users.
Experiencing explosive adoption, attention, funding, and stealing top silicon valley talent from behemoths like Google (and Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Amazon), Facebook set the standard for new web development very much in the same way that Reid Hoffman set the standard for the "Second Generation Web Entrepreneurs" by announcing the first social platform in history on May 24, 2007. Unlike Myspace, Friendster, and Meebo, Google was better positioned - and far better equipped - to address the Facebook threat and I believe will ultimately profit the most by leveraging its core competencies of empowering users to find relevant information and monetize that attention.
On October 30, 2007, Google took another massive step to retain its dominant position on the Web and extended online desktop functionality - a direct blow to Microsoft - by announcing OpenSocial, an open-source Web browser platform for 3rd party applications. The following week, Google dropped the same hammer on the mobile industry with the announcement of the Open Handset Alliance and Android, the first open-source mobile platform. This release could be seen as a preemptive measure to drown out Facebook's maturing voice exercised a week later, announcing it was revolutionizing advertising with Facebook Ads. Google has also privately been building out it's own social networking platform, Orkut, in Brazil - one of the most "social" countries in the world - that will undoubtedly incorporate much of the same functionality that many of it's products revolve around. Google took what Facebook was selectively keeping out and turned it against them - the rest of the Web.
On Facebook's one-year anniversary, the company made another move to further embed their platform into the Web, particularly other social networking sites, in the face of Google's OpenSocial initiative by opening their platform and adding web search. This move was arguably a defensive measure instead of a counter-attack as Facebook recognizes its glass has relatively little water when compared to that of the entire Internet. Facebook obviously has a vested interest in keeping Google's prying eyes out of site and has readily stiff-armed the giant before when justifiable to prevent Google from displacing the Facebook platform as the middle-man in an increasing portion of Web activity. Despite ostensible cooperation through mutual initiatives such as the Data Portability Workshops, the two have regularly swapped blows (along with other players like Myspace) for a while now with no signs of cease fire.
In turn, Google took yet another major step toward its long-time goal of usurping Microsoft's control of the desktop while positioning its control between websites (including Facebook) and their users with Chrome, the next-generation web browser. Flock unsurprisingly asserted itself with a second-generation release, but that won't keep Google at bay. Ultimately, ubiquity and control are essential for surviving this war - not necessarily winning it - and Google's "anti-browser" is a novel product that lowers barriers to entry and improves the Web-user experience in many respects.
At the end of this war, everything will be networked - no, not using Tubes - and there will be many more niche providers on the various platforms that remain when the dust clears. It's not even close to being over yet so go with the flow or choke on the smoke when you get caught in the cross-fire...
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