By Google has tried time and time again to deny this rumor, but it won’t die. Google Circles was rumored to be Google’s Facebook competitor after Google Buzz failed to do any damage. Google confirmed that they were working on code for something like a Facebook-centric social network, but it was said to only be a labs project (possibly a 20% project from a Googler). Tim O’Reilly, who tweeted that he “saw Google Circles, and it looks awesome”, later deleted that tweet and worked awfully hard to clarify what he meant.
So we know Google is working on something – they haven’t flat-out denied it. But it could be bigger than they’re letting on. New source code with the word “circles” mentioned in the context of social networking has been uncovered by one Florian Rohrweck. He said he found the code hiding in plain site inside the javascript elements on Google Profiles, a site Google says will help users get their name and whatever information they want shown in search results when people like human resource agents search for them.
Google Profiles is laid out almost exactly like a Facebook page, save for the absence of any social networking functionality. If Google Circles was just a “research-y” project, why is code related to it embedded in Google Profiles? It would make no sense to test this code on a public site without any intention of merging the two projects.
Even if the code is useless to end-users right now, they have been doing more than just research. Google makes it clear that they’d like to get into social networking every time the question is posed and it seems Google Circles could end up being their way into the fold. [The Next Web]
I don’t like Facebook at all. I’m just waiting for a Google Facebook and I’m on board. It’s just convenient to have everything Google for me. The integration it will have to Google Talk and Gmail and Chrome will make for an amazing experience for me. That’s assuming it’s intigrated, which I really can not see Google not doing.
It’s amazing how much information a person will give up to one company, let alone any company.
I say that about apple fanboys all the time.
Read the Apple ToS, it’s not just your information they want. It clearly says they own your soul, both now and in the afterlife. My Contracts professor in law school had us read the Terms of Service just so we knew how thorough such an agreement could be.
LOL, and apparently you’re not allowed to use it to make WMDs. I bet that was a real blow to bombmakers everywhere…
Now I just want to go and make a nuclear weapon, powered by the Iphone just to break that clause in there ToS.
obviously you must have a foil hat on right now hehe….
The whole circles idea really goes at what I think is a principle shortfall of Facebook–filtering. It’s such an afterthought to them. I hate that there’s no filtering options when posting via the android app, for instance.
That said, it would make me nervous to be even more reliant on Google. Not that I don’t trust Google in its current incarnation, but there’s always a chance their corporate philosophy changes in a few years.
I just hope they change the name. I’m not telling anyone to Circle me.
How is this Android???
Android = Google = Google Circles…. 6 degrees of separation don’t be such an article Nazi
Android is 200+ million users and growing. People like to store contacts on there phone, take photos, videos.
Android is one of Google biggest weapons in the social arena.
I love Google, I will definitely join any social network they make.
It’s me :D yay! But this is just a tiny tiny bit of everything I’ve uncovered… you guys should check out my blog for the sourcecode (you can download it and check it out by yourself) and read the 5000 articles that I wrote about google social
And there’s news about the android market too and the start of music sales on android market…