保罗•亚当斯在硅谷炙手可热。他是一位才华横溢的产品设计师，戴着方框眼镜，说话带有浓重的爱尔兰口音，疯狂崇拜激情四溢的技术狂人。作为谷歌（Google）顶尖的社交网络研究员，谷歌新社交网站Google+背后的理念很大程度上便出自他的创意：Google+中灵活的“圈子”功能使用户可以轻松把好友分成“挚友”或“大学哥们”。但他并未能在谷歌将自己的理念推向消费者。在去年12月的一场天才争夺战中，他选择加盟位于帕洛阿尔托以东10英里的Facebook，帮助其设计社交广告。对此，亚当斯在博客中解释道：“谷歌重视的是技术，而不是社交。”

    科技公司之间相互竞争的情况由来已久，但很少有像谷歌与Facebook这两个网络豪强之间的竞争如此激烈和残酷。为了争取像亚当斯这样的人才，吸引用户眼球，争夺广告收入，它们会不惜一切代价。虽然两家公司并未像甲骨文（Oracle）与惠普（HP）般公开诋毁挑衅，也没有如微软（Microsoft）与网景（Netscape）般明刀明枪地交火，但双方都为竞争投入了巨大的筹码。两家公司都希望成为未来网络的主宰——而最终的结果将会影响我们获取信息、沟通以及进行交易的方式。

    Facebook与谷歌：王者之争

    交战一方Facebook是社交网络中的“王者”，希望巩固自己的地位，掌握所有人的网络生活。而另一方谷歌则控制着全球的海量信息，引领人们的搜索方式，它希望在互联网从超链接时代向以人为本转变的过程中保持自己的统治地位。

    谷歌联合创始人兼CEO拉里•佩奇（4月份上任）仅比Facebook的马克•扎克伯格年长11岁，但他们却属于不同的网络一代，并且拥有截然不同的世界观。在佩奇的世界里，一切均从搜索开始。用户通过搜索来查看新闻，查找钟爱的鞋子，追踪最喜爱的名人动态。如果需要了解医院的医疗条件或决定需要购买的电视型号，用户首先要进行搜索。而且在这一领域，谷歌的程序经过十多年的改进已经如鱼得水。但近几年，网络世界却在逐渐向扎克伯格的世界倾斜，这种变革甚至堪称残酷。在扎克伯格的世界里，我们不再通过搜索获得新闻，而是等着朋友来告诉我们新鲜资讯，告诉我们他们喜欢的电影，钟爱的品牌，甚至去那里吃美味的寿司。

    现在，Facebook已经成为新互联网世界的核心，很多人一天的在线生活也是从这里开始。而Facebook成功的秘诀在于让公司在网络中传播，并允许他人分享用户的朋友圈子。结果，成千上万个网站和应用像卫星一样，围绕着Facebook运行。我们可以打开点评网站Yelp查看好友如何评价街边新开的咖啡厅，到在线音乐服务网站Spotify，让好友帮我们挑选音乐，或者与好友一起玩社交游戏公司Zynga开发的游戏。而对于佩奇来说，更糟糕的是谷歌的程序根本无法捕捉这些社交活动，导致这种程序，甚至于谷歌搜索本身的精确性日益下降，进而日益与人们的生活脱节。    

    Paul Adams is one of Silicon Valley's most wanted. He's an intellectually minded product designer with square-framed glasses, a thick Irish accent, and a cult following of passionate techies. As one of Google's lead social researchers, he helped dream up the big idea behind the company's new social network, Google+: those flexible circles that let you group friends easily under monikers like "real friends" or "college buddies." He never got to help bring his concept to consumers, though. In a master talent grab last December, Facebook lured him 10 miles east to Palo Alto to help design social advertisements. On his blog, Adams explained, "Google values technology, not social science."

    In the long history of tech rivalries, rarely has there been a battle as competitive as the raging war between the web's wonder twins. They will stop at nothing to win over whip-smart folks like Adams, amass eyeballs, and land ad dollars. There's no public trash talking à la the Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) vs. HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) smackdown, nor are the battle lines drawn as clearly as they were when Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) took on Netscape, but the stakes are immense. These companies are fighting to see which of them will determine the future of the web -- and the outcome will affect the way we get information, communicate, and buy and sell.

    Facebook and Google: Head-to-Head

    In one corner is Facebook, the reigning champion of the social web, trying to cement its position as the owner of everyone's online identity. In the other is Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), the company that organized the world's information and showed us how to find it, fighting to remain relevant as the Internet of hyperlinks gives way to an Internet of people.

    Although Larry Page, Google's co-founder and its CEO since April, was born just 11 years before Mark Zuckerberg, his counterpart at Facebook, the two belong to different Internet generations with different worldviews. In Page's web, everything starts with a search. You search for news or for a pair of shoes or to keep up with your favorite celebrity. If you want to learn about a medical condition or decide which television to buy, you search. In that world, Google's algorithms, honed over more than a decade, respond almost perfectly. But in recent years the web has tilted gradually, and perhaps inexorably, toward Zuckerberg's world. There, rather than search for a news article, you wait for your friends to tell you what to read. They tell you what movies they enjoyed, what brands they like, and where to eat sushi.

    Facebook is squarely at the center of this new universe, and much of what people do online these days starts there. But Facebook's masterstroke has been to spread itself across the web and allow others to tap your network of friends. As a result, thousands of websites and apps have essentially become satellites that orbit around Facebook. You can now go to Yelp to find out what your Facebook friends say about the new coffeehouse down the street, visit Spotify to let them pick music playlists for you, or play Zynga games with them. To make matters worse for Page, much of this social activity can't be seen by Google's web-trolling algorithms, so every day they (and by extension, Google) become a little bit less accurate and relevant.

    网络向社交化的转变在方方面面改变着公司和消费者。最先受到冲击的行业包括广告业。目前，美国310亿美元在线广告市场中，谷歌的份额达到41%，而且在搜索广告市场，谷歌一直雄踞榜首。但搜索广告的增长正在放缓，广告商开始将有限的资金投放到Facebook。毕竟，Facebook拥有8亿用户，而且许多用户在Facebook上停留的时间远远超过其他网站。（见页底图表）预计今年Facebook的显示广告收入将增长81%，而谷歌显示广告收入的增长幅度预计为34%。虽然谷歌和Facebook让我们认为两家公司仍有无限的成长空间，但千万不要被这种假象所迷惑。正如美国投资银行Stifel Nicolaus的分析师乔丹•罗翰所说：“如果谷歌与Facebook不直接交锋，抢占对方的市场份额，它们根本不可能达到投资者的期望，在显示广告市场实现数十亿美元的增长幅度。”

    现在的佩奇就像十几年前的比尔•盖茨，他发现公司对科技世界的统治力正在下降。所以他决定反击，投入巨大的精力争夺社交网络市场。佩奇成为谷歌CEO后的第一把火便是推出Google+，加大财力和工程力量的投入，对Facebook的领地展开攻势。其实Google+并非谷歌在社交网络进行的首次尝试，但却是谷歌第一款没有遭到业界嘲弄的社交产品。谷歌称，仅仅四个月内，Google +的注册用户便达到4,000万人。而在另一方，扎克伯格也非常清楚，自从Facebook轻松超越MySpace成为全球最大的社交网站以来，Google+是Facebook遇到的第一个真正意义上的威胁。（对Facebook而言，这不仅仅是荣誉之争：如果公司的光环受到威胁，将会影响其期待已久的首次公开招股。预计公司IPO规模将超过800亿美元。）于是，在Google+发布后不久，扎克伯格便在总部紧急挂出粉红色霓虹灯信号，上面写着“戒备状态”，目的是要提醒员工需要不分昼夜，加班加点，借鉴Google+中最受欢迎的部分功能。

    但防守并非扎克伯格的风格。今年9月，在公司的F8开发者大会上，他推出了海量的新功能，旨在从根本上提高目前的服务水平。而且，预计公司最终将会推出一个广告网络，管理所有社交行为，帮助广告商在网络中更有效地锁定目标客户。如果这一策略得到完美执行，将会进一步威胁谷歌在在线广告领域中的霸主地位。

    所以，当大多数用户轻松游走于Gmail账户和在Facebook订阅的新闻资讯之间时，在旧金山半岛的核心地段，正在进行一场激烈的战争。今年夏天，扎克伯格为愿意在周末加班的员工提供免费食物。而佩奇则催促他的团队以近乎疯狂的速度为Google+添加新功能：在前90天内推出了100个新功能。他们现在的决定，包括产品发布、广告推广等，将会决定最终的胜者。

    谷歌

    拉里•佩奇很不高兴。当时是去年春天的一个周末，38岁的佩奇正在安卓（Android）手机上试用Google+的早期样品。他发现把拍摄的照片发布到Google+中的程序过于繁琐。于是他打电话向谷歌社交业务负责人维克•刚铎抱怨。刚铎向他解释了Google+团队为什么要采取那种方法，试图说服他。但佩奇坚持认为，照片应该一键上传。在谷歌，佩奇的要求都会得到满足。于是，刚铎命令团队重新设计照片上传功能，现在，佩奇对这项技术赞不绝口。近期，他向外界描述通过安卓系统向Google+发布照片是多么简单：“这绝对是神奇的体验。”

    This shift to a more social web changes everything for businesses and consumers alike. Among the first industries to be rocked: advertising. Google may capture 41% of today's $31 billion U.S. online advertising market, including the lion's share of the search-ad market. But growth in search advertising is slowing, and advertisers are putting more of their limited dollars into Facebook, with its 800 million users, many of whom spend more time on Facebook than on any other site. (See chart at the bottom of the page) Facebook's display-ad revenue is expected to grow 81% this year, while Google's display-ad dollars will rise an estimated 34%. Google and Facebook would have you believe there is room for each to drive forward with unlimited success, but don't be fooled. As Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan explains, "It's highly unlikely that either Google or Facebook could grow by the billions that investors expect in the display market without engaging directly and stealing market share from the other."

    Like Bill Gates a decade or so earlier, Page is seeing his company's grip on the tech world loosening. So he's fighting back with a mammoth effort to grab a piece of the social web. His first substantial act as Google's new CEO was to amp up the considerable financial and engineering mojo the company had aimed at Facebook's turf by releasing Google+. It's not Google's first social initiative, but it's the one that folks aren't laughing at, and Google says 40 million people have signed up in only four months. Across town Zuckerberg knows Google+ is the first credible threat Facebook has faced since it sailed past MySpace to become the world's No. 1 social network. (For Facebook there are more than bragging rights at stake: Anything that tarnishes its halo could impact its long-awaited initial public offering with a valuation that is expected to top $80 billion.) Not surprisingly, shortly after Google+ made its debut, Zuckerberg flipped on a pink neon sign at headquarters with the word lockdown, signaling that employees were on notice to work around the clock on, among other things, replicating some of the most praised Google+ features.

    But defensive moves are not Zuckerberg's style, and in September, at the company's F8 developers event, he unleashed a sea of new features that alter the current service radically. And it's expected the company will launch an ad network eventually that will harness all those social actions to help advertisers target consumers better across the web. Smartly deployed, it could further threaten Google's position as the king of online advertising.

    So while most of us spend our days casually toggling back and forth between our Gmail accounts and our Facebook newsfeeds, down in the heart of the San Francisco Peninsula it's war. Zuckerberg served free food this summer to willing workers on the weekends. Page is pushing his team to add features to Google+ at a furious pace: more than 100 in the first 90 days. The decisions that are being made right now -- product launches, advertising plays -- will determine which company prevails.

    Google

    Larry Page was not pleased. It was a weekend day last spring, and Page, 38, was playing around with an early prototype of Google+ on his Android phone. He found it too cumbersome to post photos he had just taken. He called Vic Gundotra, Google's social czar, to complain. Gundotra tried to push back, explaining why the Google+ team decided on the approach it had taken. Page insisted that photos be uploaded with one click. At Google, what Page asks for, he gets. Gundotra ordered his team to rebuild the photo-uploading feature, and Page now gushes about the technology. "It is a totally magical experience," he said recently, as he described how easy it is to post photos from Android to Google+.

    从许多方面来看，Google+就是拉里•佩奇的社交网站。Google+的开发工作早在佩奇担任公司CEO之前便已经开始，但他从一开始就密切关注项目的进展。最初几个月里，佩奇每周五上午11点都会参加项目团队的每周产品评测会议。为了密切跟踪项目进度，佩奇甚至把办公室和高管团队的主力都搬到Google+团队所在的大楼。他为项目提供了大量的资源，使其成为谷歌诞生13年以来最大规模的一次工程投入。此外，他还将刚铎提拔为公司高级副总裁，直接对他负责。佩奇还将数千名谷歌员工的一部分奖金与公司在社交业务上的表现挂钩。

    Google+也是佩奇为使谷歌恢复曾经的灵活、负责的态度而进行的第一次尝试，同时也是为了避免陷入“创新者的窘境”，这个曾经使许多成功的公司深陷困境的顽症。在Google+项目中，公司抛弃了以往放任自流，甚至是无秩序的创新方式，代之以自上而下的方式。谷歌另外一位联合创始人谢尔盖•布林表示，允许“百花齐放”对谷歌依然非常重要，但“在所有花都绽放之后，你会希望能把它们收集起来，做成紧凑的花束。”

    谷歌要实现在社交领域的野心或许确实需要一些这样的铁律。谷歌之前对Facebook领地进行的几次攻势均铩羽而归。2004年，几乎在Facebook面世的同时，谷歌就推出了第一个社交网站Orkut，但目前除了在巴西市场，Orkut网站早已被人遗忘。2007年，为了对抗Facebook，谷歌联合Myspace和其他社交网站，推出了社交网站开放式平台Open Social，结果也以失败而告终。两年后，谷歌又推出了Wave，但仅仅几个月之后便被打入冷宫。2010年，谷歌推出Buzz，试图将Gmail用户强行拉入社交网站，但很快这便成为谷歌在社交领域中的最大败笔：Buzz将人们的Gmail联系人公开给其他人，导致美国联邦贸易委员会（Federal Trade Commission）介入调查，并强制要求谷歌修改其隐私政策，同时必须接受政府监控，时长为20年。

    Buzz的惨败让谷歌警醒。谷歌内部一些最具影响力的工程师开始提出，社交网络将给谷歌带来致命的威胁。随着网络开始以人为核心，尤其是围绕Facebook的人际关系图进行重建，谷歌的影响力将被逐渐侵蚀，最终被时代所抛弃。这种论调让谷歌高层大为光火，于是，一个雄心勃勃的项目很快出炉。这个名为翡翠海（Emerald Sea）的项目不仅要让谷歌成为Facebook的强劲对手，而且要围绕社交媒体对谷歌现有的产品进行改革。（刚铎选择翡翠海作为项目代号，预示着全新的海岸线与暴怒的海水并存。）

    经过一年多的酝酿，今年6月份，谷歌终于推出了Google+。结果如何？这个社交网站针对用户的喜好，从Facebook中汲取精华，去除糟粕。你会发现Google+的主页与个人资料页、照片与游戏标签，当然还有无休止的好友更新都与Facebook非常类似。谷歌+1键的作用类似于Facebook的Like键。不过，Facebook一直因肆意践踏用户的隐私选择权而颇受指责，于是Google+则使用户可以自行决定其所发布内容的查看权限。Facebook无法清晰地将同事、同学和好友分开，而Google+则推出圈子功能，用户可以很直观地将关注对象进行分类。Zynga等应用开发商在Facebook平台上获得的收入，30%将属于Facebook所有，而Google+表示，目前其抽取的比例仅为5%。自从Google+推出以来，谷歌推出了100多个新功能，而且，佩奇表示未来还将推出更多新功能。在硅谷，几乎所有人都曾认为，谷歌根本无法与Facebook竞争，但Google+的表现却让所有人——包括Facebook的忠实拥趸——大跌眼镜。乔•格林就表示：“Google+非常出色。”乔•格林是扎克伯格在哈佛大学（Havard）的室友，他创办了慈善社交网站Causes，该网站开发的应用程序目前在Facebook上运行。

    译者：阿龙/乔树静

    In many ways, Google+ is Larry Page's social network. Early work on Google+ predated Page's ascent to the top post, but he has been intimately involved with the project from the start. In the initial months, Page dropped by every Friday at 11 a.m. for the group's weekly product reviews. To keep close tabs, Page moved his office and much of the executive suite to the building where the Google+ team was sequestered. He blessed the project with massive resources, making it one of the largest engineering endeavors Google has undertaken in its 13-year history, and he elevated Gundotra to the post of senior vice president, reporting directly to him. Page also tied a portion of the bonuses of thousands of Googlers to how well the company did in social.

    Google+ is also the first test of Page's plan to transform Google into the nimbler, more accountable company it once was, and in the process avoid the Innovators' Dilemma, the paralysis that grips so many successful companies. In the Google+ project, the company's freewheeling and sometimes chaotic approach to innovation was cast aside -- replaced with a more top-down style. Allowing a thousand flowers to bloom may still be important at Google, says Sergey Brin, the other co-founder, but "once they do bloom, you want to put together a coherent bouquet."

    Maybe some discipline is what Google's social ambitions needed. Google's previous attacks on Facebook's turf were an embarrassment. Orkut, Google's first social network, was born alongside Facebook in 2004 but is largely irrelevant outside of Brazil. Open Social, a Google-led effort in 2007 to rally MySpace and other social networks into an alliance to balance the clout of Facebook, flopped. Two years later Google introduced Wave, only to kill it after a few months, and Buzz, a 2010 attempt to shoehorn Gmail users into a social network, quickly turned into Google's biggest social faux pas: Buzz exposed people's Gmail contacts to others, triggering a Federal Trade Commission investigation that forced Google to revamp its privacy policies and accept government monitoring for 20 years.

    The Buzz fiasco was a wake-up call at Google. Some of its most high-profile engineers started making the case that the social web posed a vital threat to Google. As the web was being rebuilt around people -- and, in particular, around Facebook's graph of human relationships -- Google could end up on the sidelines, its relevance eroding by the day. The message rattled Google's top brass, and an ambitious project -- called Emerald Sea -- not only to create a credible rival to Facebook but also to transform Google's existing products around social media, quickly took shape. (Gundotra picked the name Emerald Sea to suggest both new horizons and stormy waters.)

    After more than a year of gestation, Google finally introduced Google+ in June. The result? A social network that cloned much of what people like about Facebook and eliminated much of what they hate about Facebook. You'll find familiar home and profile pages, tabs for photos and games, and of course the endless updates from friends. Google's +1 button works much like Facebook's Like. But where Facebook is perpetually accused of running roughshod over people's privacy preferences, Google+ made it very easy to decide who can see what users post on the site. Facebook lacked a good way to separate workmates from classmates from real friends, so Google+ was built around Circles, an intuitive way to group people in buckets. Facebook takes 30% of the revenue that app developers like Zynga make on its platform, so Google+ said it would take only 5% for now. Since the launch, Google has rolled out more than 100 new features, and Page says there is much more to come. In Silicon Valley, where everyone had given up on the idea that Google could compete with Facebook, Google+ caught everyone -- including Facebook loyalists -- by surprise. "Google+ was impressive," says Joe Green, one of Zuckerberg's Harvard roommates and the founder of Causes, an application built to run on Facebook.