Google on Wednesday announced its much-awaited social networking service, which aims to dent Facebook's popularity. According to Vic Gundotra, a senior vice-president at Google, the company's latest social networking service called Google+ Project consists of Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Mobile.
"Online sharing needs a serious re-think, so it's time we got started," he wrote on the official Google blog while announcing the limited availability of the service.
In the lengthy post, Gundotra implies that sharing, or in other words, social networking as we know it on the Facebook is "awkward" or "even broken" because it doesn't give due regard to privacy as well as doesn't allow users to have complete control over their social circle.
According to Google, Circle will allow users to create different groups of friends or relatives. This will make sure that the information you share with one set of group doesn't reaches the other group. Sparks will allow users to access the content in which they are interested from across the web through Google while Hangout will allow them to video or text chat with anyone willing to do so.
Google's +Mobile will be offered through, initially only Android, smartphones so that users can share pictures taken with their phone within their Circle or post messages to their friends.
To those who are interested in trying out Google+, Gundotra said, "We're beginning in field trial, so you may find some rough edges... and the project is by invitation only."
The popularity and growth of Facebook, which has over 600 million users, have alarmed Google. While the company still leads in overall search market on the web, Facebook this year has become biggest player in display advertising. According to eMarketer, a research firm, Facebook has over 17% share in display advertising on the web. In comparison Google has a 12.3% market share.
Google, which came to the social networking party late, had launched Buzz in 2010. But the service failed to take off. It also tried Wave but that too failed to win many users, forcing the company to shut down the service last year.
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