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Rivalry: Gmail blocks Facebook, in turn Facebook's Gmail killer turns up
By Aadil Masood, SiliconIndia
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Monday, 15 November 2010, 15:17 IST
Bangalore: Facebook and Google are in a tug of war as Facebook prepares to launch its new web mail application called "Titan". Titan will be challenging other web mail applications like Yahoo mail, Windows Live Hot mail and Google's Mail.
To start with, Google has been in continuous denial that it's developing a social networking platform to compete with the rival Facebook."We're not working on a social network platform that's just going to be another social network platform," said Hugo Barra, Head of Google's mobile product management.
On the other hand, Google CEO Eric Schmidt sparked speculations of a Facebook rival when he said the company would add a layer of social- networking features to its main products. The speculations intensified earlier this week when the search engine company said it had blocked Facebook from accessing a user's Gmail contacts to add to their friends' lists accusing that Facebook does not allow Gmail users to search for contacts on Facebook.
The game got interesting as "Project Titan" - a web-based email client unofficially referred as its "Gmail killer" will be launched by Facebook. It is a full-fledged webmail client, but promises huge amount of potential. Facebook will tweak the design of its webmail client to display content in a seamless fashion.
Facebook which has around 500 million users will provide personal@facebook.com e-mail addresses as its web mail ID for its users. Titan will also be a part of the Microsoft's Office Web Apps suite allowing Facebook users to create and share Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents making Titan, the trump card for Microsoft.The social network's messaging platform enables direct message capability and one-to-many sharing of messages, links, photos and videos. It also offers a Web-based chat client, which provides capable presence. Their applications will tick as the application is developed by Gmail creators Bret Taylor and Paul Bucheit and has all signs of increasing the revenue.
Ethics becomes the first causality in rivalry and same hold true. In order to retain staff engineers Google is offering hefty sums in the range of $3-$3.5 Million, to turn down Facebook offer.
The rivalry Of Google and Facebook doesn't stop here. War is on and is being fought in close quarters. Both will try to 'leave no stone unturned'. Coming days will come up with lot surprises till then debates and rumors will buzz the market.