Go Woody Wire

Up to this point, Google has unsuccessfully competed against MySpace and Facebook in the coveted social networking market space. It now appears that they have a plan with Google Profiles.

The plan calls for the users of their services, like Blogger and Gmail, to create universal profiles. This rather unassuming approach is how most social networking experts thought Google would enter into the social networking ring.

To encourage profile creation, I would be willing to bet that the user profiles will rank highly within Google’s organic search results. Thus, people who want to control their online reputation will be baited into creating a profile. A report released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project showed just us just how important this is to Americans. It suggested that 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves on Google or another search engine.

That will be a huge advantage for Google, who unlike other startup social networks won’t have to invest a lot of money on attracting and retaining an established user base.

I’m not going to call this a Facebook “killer, ” but it is much more a threat than OpenSocial and “the Beacon scandal” ever were.