More from the Google Overlords

Google is continuing its march towards world domination. As Farhad Manjoo reports at Slate.com, the world's largest search engine is adding the profiles of registered users to search results. The rationale for this? According to Google, it's a chance for people to have greater control over what comes up when someone searches for their name (or, probably more often, what comes up when someone conducts a "vanity search" for their own name).

The conspiracy theory, though, is that Google actually intends to use this profile information to set up a social networking service to rival giants like Facebook and MySpace:

If the speculation proves true, Google's plan would be both deviously brilliant and also a little scary. Why would Google want a social network? To get to know you better—and, thus, to serve you more profitable ads. Google has long made gobs of money by running ads based on search keywords—if you search for "shoes," Google runs spots for Zappos and DSW, and it makes a few cents if you click on them. But last month Google announced that it would join many of its rival Web companies in adopting "behavioral targeting," a method of serving ads that relies on a much more extensive picture of your online activity. In the future, instead of showing you an ad targeted simply to your search keyword, Google might look at everything it has learned about you over an extended period of time in order to give you a message better-tailored to your interests. If you type in "shoes," Google might be able to tell if you're a nurse who lives in New York or a construction worker who lives in Miami—and would show you shoe ads customized to your character. [...]

Here's where the social network might come in. Google already knows a lot about you; through its search engine, its vast advertising network, and its many Web applications (Gmail, YouTube, etc.), the company can probably already glean enough information about a Web surfer to be able to tell the difference between a nurse and a construction worker. But a Google social network would add one more dimension to the picture—it could mine your relationships, too.

Manjoo goes on to explain that, while advertising on social networking sites isn't an extremely profitable venture, Google would have a competitive edge over the established sites...lots and lots of personal information about lots and lots of individual users, which it plans to couple with the motivation of people wanting to make sure that their name is "well Googled":

...Google controls a much larger swath of the Web than its rivals. Facebook can use what it knows about your relationships to serve you targeted ads on—well, pretty much just on Facebook. That isn't much use, because people aren't very interested in commerce when they're checking in with their friends. But Google operates the Web's most far-reaching advertising network, so whatever it learns about you while you're interacting with your friends can be used to target you later on, while you're in some more ad-friendly part of the Web—when you're reading the New York Times, or watching YouTube, or searching for a Mother's Day present. By using your "social graph" as just one factor in a much larger behavioral profile, the company could finally turn social-networking into a killer business.

[...] Google doesn't necessarily need to build a social network that you find fun—that is, it doesn't have to build an alternative to Facebook. Instead, all it really needs is to get you to tell it more about your connections. I'll bet that a promise of improved vanity search results will be enough to bring a lot of people on board. Indeed, even if you're not so vain, it makes good sense to set up a page on Google. A Google Profile is a good way to present your best side to potential employers, prospective dates, future in-laws, or your parole board—anyone you'd like to impress. Why wouldn't you sign up?

(Via Andrew Sullivan)