Google, known to be the search engine giant that transformed the internet by cataloging the World Wide Web, and delivering it to internet users with simplicity and speed, is now, aiming to keep a better track of who is using the internet.
Best known for its search engine, Google has harvested information throughout the web with its crawlers that enable the company to collect almost everything that is posted, uploaded, written and created on the internet.
Information and data are seen to be priceless. And the best way to keep up with the competition is by collecting as much of them as possible. And when social media has been a magnet for people to share, Google with its Google+ is approaching a new way to collect information.
The Mountain View, California-based company said on Tuesday, February 26, that it would begin encouraging websites and mobile apps to accept log-in credentials via Google+, its social network.
Google that integrates well with third-party sites and apps, will help Google to track its users as they surf the internet. This represents the search giant's effort to establish a strong hold of all-important aspects in the social web.
Among websites that agreed to accept Google's social sign-in are: The Guardian, USA Today, OpenTable, Flixster, Fancy and Fitbit. This has been confirmed by Google in its blog post on Tuesday.
Google's biggest competitor in the social media industry, Facebook, has been able to gather massive amount of information about its users. The information that includes their personal interest, activities, contact person and others are collected since 2008. Facebook is able to funnel all those information from users even if they are not on Facebook because many popular apps that allow log-ins with Facebook identity. This results in data about the user back to the social network.
Although its social platform is heading for its two-year anniversary, Google that is lagging behind its competitors when offering third-party sign-ins, moved cautiously in opening up its social network to developers. In September 2011, Google offered a limited API for only public Google+ data, and followed it with Google+ history access last summer. Mobile and web developers will be able to accept Google sign-ins and depending on the permissions that the app requests and the user chooses to authorize, the sites/apps they made can gain access to Google+ social sharing. This follows the lead of other services such as Google Drive and Google Calendar that already have permitted developers full access.
In response to Facebook's rise, Google that has been innovating mobile experience with Google Glass, has made its social web efforts a top priority in recent years. Google sign-in that resembles Facebook Connect or Sign in with Twitter, has been enhanced with a few 'twists' that made Google more social and friendly. Some of the twists that Google made with its sign-in options are:
- On Android devices only, using Google account to sign-in into a website gives the option to have that site's app automatically downloaded and installed on the user's mobile phone. An option to decline is available. Apple does not allow that flexibility for iOS devices.
- Developers who are using custom programming environments - for cross-platform coding, for instance - may not benefit from the iOS or Android SDKs until those environments are updated. But they can still use web-based authentication.
- Google+ streams now feature a more interactive posts with buttons that can trigger another app when tapped from a mobile device.
"This is one of the most significant launches that has come out of the Google+ platform," David Glazer, engineering director at Google+.
Launched in 2011, Google+ is still far behind Facebook. Google+ had 100 million monthly active users in December 2012, compared to over 1 billion for Facebook. Despite the lack in numbers, Google's executives have said that Google+ is more like an invisible data "backbone" that tracks individual users across its various properties - and less as a consumer internet destination.
Over the past year the company has made changes to the log-in process at YouTube. For commenting users need their Google+ accounts rather than anonymous handles. This was an early example of Google's effort to drive all its users' interest into its social media network.
Google is highlighting sign-in's content-sharing controls as a major feature of the service. Although the sharing controls are also designed to encourage more engagement with apps on Google+, the functionality still depends on the premise that users might want to share certain types of app content with some people in their network but not others.