Google Me is go! The long-rumoured n from Google is definitely on the way. Eric Schmidt confirmed that Google Me will arrive this autumn during the Google Zeitgeist conference in Arizona. But don’t expect a Facebook knock off, it seems Google Me will be a new layer on top of some familiar Google products…
Schmidt revealed that Google has been trying to get access to Facebook contact lists to let people grow their social network in Google products. He implied that this would be a fair deal since Facebook uses Gmail to allow users to invite friends to join the social network.
However, Google won’t rely on getting Facebook to play ball. Schmidt said: “The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data. Failing that there are other ways to get this information.” He said Google will announce social-networking elements in the autumn but shied away from specifics.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google Me is still being worked on at the social network’s Mountain View HQ. The plan is apparently to add more social sauce to YouTube as well as encouraging users to flock to Google Me to pull together content from services like Flickr and Twitter. We saw some Google Me clues just the other day.
Google already tried to dip its toe back into social networking with Google Buzz and didn’t do all that well. With new Twitter making it easier to consume content from other sites including YouTube on the homepage, where Google Me might fit remains a bit of a mystery.
Do you think Google can succeed with Google Me? Or is the brute force of Facebook now unstoppable? Hit the comments and join us in speculating about what Google Me might mean.
Due Autumn 2010 | £free | Google (via WSJ)
