Facebook, in the United States one in four users is on the social network while Google slows down

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The Facebook overtaking Google, is history from a few months ago. Today’s news, however, consists only of numbers. One in four browsers uses Facebook while Google follows with -3%, according to statistics from Hitwise. All this is happening in the United States where, that is, the eyes of digital world observers have always been focused. The rise of Facebook is no longer news and in some ways, with due differences, it resembles that of competitor Google (competitor in numbers, not in business model).

Microsoft’s dominance
If we take a step back a few years, the world of net-economy knew only one undisputed king, for some courts also a despot, named Bill Gates. The founder of Microsoft, of software for anyone to use at prices not always affordable, of Windows, the access window for any PC, seemed destined never to know the day of his decline. Yet, it happened.

Google’s rise
One king is dead, another takes his place. This time the name is made of a few letters, only six. Easy to pronounce, clean-faced, performant, friendly. Its name is Google and it is “a search engine”, indeed, it will soon become “The search engine”. Its birth dates back to the late nineties, the story is common to many others in the digital world, but its rise was silent and powerful. Google quickly becomes the Web. Many of its competitors try to counter it, but Google’s initiatives become increasingly decisive and winning. Between one patent and another, between one product launch and another, Google has time to make acquisitions and, above all, to obtain ideas from the competitors themselves. No one will think that Google could one day lay down its arms, no one will think that Google could have “real competitors”, and yet…Google to obtain ideas from the competitors themselves. No one will think that Google could one day lay down its arms, no one will think that Google could have “real competitors”, and yet…

Facebook and its popularity
Rewinding the film, we are back to the present day. The net-economy recognizes another king that rhymes with “social network”. Even if the rhyme isn’t perfect, its name is very easy to remember: Facebook. To think that a large square built for the people and made popular by the very same “population” could scare the giant of Mountain View seemed more like a magic trick than a theory until recently. Yet, it happened.

Today Facebook represents the real bogeyman for Google, and they know it well in California. Google, which for years made “silence” its winning strategy (it seemed to have the recipe for Coca-Cola), has become more human in recent times. The silences continue, but at more or less regular intervals, a representative pops up here and there on the Web, between a forum and a blog, between a video and a tweet. Google wants to become more popular, more loved, and above all, more used. Will it still be able to impose its business model linked to the world of advertising in the wake of Wired’s declarations: “the Web is dead?”? The near future may provide answers, but in the meantime, the race for mobile by various Web players has begun, and Google doesn’t seem to be in the “leading position” at all.