Google+ Chief Snaps Back At Zuckerberg's 'Little Facebook' Dig

The claws are coming out in Silicon Valley.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed Google's social networking site Google+, launched in June of this year, as a copycat attempt to "build their own little version of Facebook" -- harsh words for a project that Google insiders have characterized as a bet-the-company effort.

Google+'s vice president of product Bradley Horowitz blasted back at Zuckerberg's critique and warned that the Facebook CEO was underestimating Google.

"We are delighted to be underestimated. It's served us very well to date. That's fine by us. I'm not going to clear anything up," Horowitz told Bloomberg's Emily Chang.

Horowitz also outlined Google's ambitions for Google+ and explained in no uncertain terms that the company hopes the social network will provide it with even more data about its users. Though Google has come under fire for privacy violations in the past, Horowitz claimed that the web giant actually knows "very little" about its users and seeks to address this gap with Google+.

"Today [users] come back to us in a largely unidentified state. We know very little about them and we remember very little about them," Horowitz said. "The way we think about Google+ is changing this mode of interaction so we actually get to know our users deeply. We understand who they are, what they love, who they know and then reflect that back as value to them, so that all of our services get better when users use their own data in their own services."

Zuckerberg made a similar claim about Facebook in his interview with Rose, while positing that companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, which quietly collected data on individuals, were a greater threat to users' privacy than Facebook, which showcased only the information users had volunteered.

Previously, Google has positioned Google+ as the more private-focused alternative to Facebook.

Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said at the Web 2.0 conference earlier this year that Google's social networking site would "take a privacy centered approach, one that's very focused on individuals."

Horowitz declined to share the latest stats on Google+'s users, but noted that the service had "grown significantly" since announcing it had reached 40 million unique users.

Watch the full interview with Horowitz on Bloomberg here.

Comments

[Marc Schipperheyn]

05:16 AM on 11/09/2011

It's interesting to see that Google is benefiting from getting as much personal information as possible while at the same time introducing strict and pay-if-you-want-more limits on API interaction.with their services. Very un-Google that smacks of corporate greed. The Facebook approach maximum-amount-of-queries-per-second makes much more sense.

[Blodo]

08:18 PM on 11/08/2011

It's time for a people's revolution against these privacy shredding so and so's. Check out unthink dot com. It bills itself as the anti-fb site. No info will be shared with advertisers.

[Mike Cat]

07:07 PM on 11/08/2011

Google Chrome Browser out right collects all your browsing data.

[Lost Nation]

06:49 PM on 11/08/2011

I wasn't aware Zuckerburg had the ability to speak

[iflip88]

06:25 PM on 11/08/2011

Both Google and Facebook are liars. They both know more about us than our own mothers. It's called "Big Brother".

[mtnestr]

06:08 PM on 11/08/2011

Now girls ........ !

[Skotyman]

06:00 PM on 11/08/2011

"The way we think about Google+ is changing this mode of interaction so we actually get to know our users deeply. We understand who they are, what they love, who they know and then reflect that back as value to them,"..

This is like the phone company saying they care about what we talk on the phone about and want to steer our conversations in a way that has value.

[bealebkk]

05:52 PM on 11/08/2011

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz boring

[Stilyagi]

05:40 PM on 11/08/2011

"We understand who they are, what they love, who they know and then reflect that back as value to them, so that all of our services get better when users use their own data in their own services."

Oh, good God. Targeting people like this is called EVIL. People already know who they are, what they love, who they know. They do not need a large conglomerate telling them what to buy, based on that.

And frankly, I don't know who Google thinks it is, but I don't see who their dirty schemes will work. I ALWAYS surf with sophisticated ad-blocking software, and I NEVER look at Google contextual ads, much less click on them. Good freaking luck, Evil Doers.

[ver1tas]

05:40 PM on 11/08/2011

They are going back and forth and meanwhile I'm just sitting here thinking... you're ALL the same!!!!!!!

[Marie Ruley]

05:09 PM on 11/08/2011

While Facebook is far from innocent, Google truly does gather and store way too much informatio­n on everyone that uses it. They have ZERO transparen­cy and ZERO accountabi­lity...not even for Google Checkout or Adwords (from a former advertiser and merchant).

I don't trust FaceBook but I trust Google even less.

[Otherday]

05:10 PM on 11/08/2011

Horowitz/Google and Zuckerberg/Facebook have privatized enterprises that should be part of our commons. Zuckerberg has said that what he does is really a "utility," and he's right. Libraries used to be the common repository of our collective wisdom, with the mother lobe of information being the Library of Congress, perhaps. It wasn't a money-making endeavor. We all owned jointly all that accumulated wisdom. Now Google does?

And post offices, since the days when Ben Franklin served as the first Post Master General, has served to connect us by conveying our messages to every American with a P.O. box. Nobody was trying to make a pile of money off of the service. We are all citizens and need to communicate with each other for personal & business reasons. Now Facebook takes that over?

It isn't smart to let a tiny number of mega-billionaires seize control of these important functions that really belong to us all, like a utility that delivers essential services. Corporatists only care, as they claim, about the profits for shareholders, true? You aren't the priority.

[speedntktz]

01:14 AM on 11/09/2011

I don't nor do any of my colleagues use FB for business communications. For marketing purposes to reach a large audience yes, but for personal direct communication, text, IM, voice or email.

[CPNASH]

04:46 PM on 11/08/2011

Google have done some pretty dumb things with their search engine's lately, so I wouldn't over estimate them. Mark, on the other hand already has his site and it's worked well up to now. I also know many of us are p...ed off with so many of these new social networks trying to jump on the band wagon.

[CommonSenseForChange]

04:42 PM on 11/08/2011

But, but, but.. Zuckerberg stole the whole idea from the people that hired him to make facebook. What a farce facebook is and so is its thieving, crooked to the core little snit founder.

[leorangerie]

04:37 PM on 11/08/2011

Battle of the billionaire nerds! Entertaining, and could get better.