Google+ vs Facebook war

The Google+ vs Facebook war is heating up. Both the companies have managed to create a great deal of hype as to who will rule the future of Social networking. Google+ has most of the features of Facebook but those features are overly simplified with good aesthetics and extremely cool user interface. In fact, Google+ is so user friendly to use that it is said: the only thing not user friendly about Google+ is its url plus.google.com.

This heated debate has brought some nice looking GIF images showing how Google Inc has managed to sideline Facebook by its new product Google+.

 

 

 

Google’s Financials

Google’s revenues grew 24% over the year to $8.14 billion, marginally shy of the market’s expected revenues of $8.15 billion. Over the year, paid clicks grew 39%, with cost per click falling 12% during the same period driven by the company’s push in mobile advertising. Among other operating metrics, Google+, their social network service, continued to add users and reported more than 170 million registered users. According to market data, U.S. users of Google+ spent an average 3.3 minutes on the network in January, compared with Facebook’s user average of more than seven hours. 

Chrome and Android also showed strength, with Chrome reporting more than 200 million users and Android activations growing to 850,000 a day. eMarketer estimates that Google will account for 16.5% of the US market for display ads this year. Their growth is expected to continue to the next year, when their market share will surpass Facebook’s as Google goes on to claim 20% of the US display ad market. Display advertising has become a two-horse race, with Google and Facebook together expected to account for a third of online display revenues. Google’s share has been on the rise since they acquired AdMob in 2010. eMarketer expects Facebook’s growth to slow down based on their S-1 filing, which reflected a lower than expected growth rate in 2011, especially in the fourth quarter.

Google’s Advertising Growth

Google’s mobile business is strong and now accounts for more than 90% of mobile searches in the country. Last year, Google’s mobile ad revenues were a mere 5% of their total revenues. They are also focusing on video advertising and plan to roll out a streamlined advertising program for YouTube. The program will be known as AdWords for Video and will be launched next month to help small businesses create self-service video campaigns. The new system will help Google do away with the sales reps who were needed earlier to manage ads for the businesses.

Google Launches Google Play

This quarter, Google announced the launch of Google Play, a service that lets users access their media content, books, apps, and games from the web or from their Android device wirelessly and with no synchronization required. Play is integrated with their other offerings so that users of Google+ can see recommendations from friends.