Google Friend Connect Now Open To All Websites

by Erick Schonfeld on December 4, 2008

Update: Facebook just opened up FB Connect as well in a self-serve fashion. It’s mano-a-mano.

The battle over who will control access to your online identity is heating up. In the wake of more and more partners finally starting to take a shine to Facebook’s competing FB Connect (which we just implemented on Techcrunch), Google’s Friend Connect is now in an open beta. Before it was in a limited preview release, but now any website can add Google Friend Connect as a login option.

Google Friend Connect is OpenSocial’s answer to Facebook Connect. It lets other websites accept a member’s OpenSocial username and password to log into their sites. More importantly, it also lets websites access users’ social data, which includes friend lists, profile information, feed messages, reviews, ratings and the like.

Since it is based on OpenID, visitors to a Website that adds Friend Connect code will be able to sign in using their Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID usernames and passwords. The Websites will also be able to add any OpenSocial apps developed by third parties. And it supports the OAuth data portability standard.

When you drill down into the technical details, there are some differences between Friend Connect and FB Connect. But ultimately, what is at stake here is what will become the identity and data portability standard on the Web, and who will control it. While Friend Connect is taking a more open-standards approach, Facebook has the users and the momentum. Who are you betting on?

Facebook Won't Be Rushed Into Going Public Like Google

Image by David Recordon via Flickr

from the well,-it's-financials-are-quite-a-bit-worse... dept

Throughout 2002 and 2003 there was a ton of speculation concerning when Google would "finally" go public. Everyone knew the company was making a lot of money and growing fast, but it wasn't clear how big the company was nor how successful. The company's top execs insisted that they did not want to go public and tried to avoid any discussion of it. However, in early 2004, the company tripped a specific level that required them to start reporting their earnings publicly. If you have over 500 shareholders, even as a private company, you are required to file earnings reports, just as if you were a public company -- and at that point, Google execs realized there was no additional benefit in remaining private. So that single event pushed Google to finally IPO, and some were beginning to wonder if the same might push Facebook into an oncoming IPO.
It looks like that won't be happening.
Facebook's lawyers requested and received a special exemption from the SEC, allowing the company to not report its earnings publicly, even if it goes over 500 shareholders (which is likely to happen relatively soon). The exemption will remain in place until the company decides to go public or is acquired. You have to think that some folks at Google are kicking themselves for not trying to do the same thing. Either way, it's pretty clear that Facebook doesn't have the financial numbers that Google had at the time it went public, either -- so forcing Facebook to go public at this time probably would have made a lot less sense than it did for Google, who had fantastic earnings

Google Launches Video and Voice Chat for Gmail

Image via CrunchBaseGoogle today announced a major update for Gmail: video and voice chat. To make this work, users only have to install a small browser plugin. Google will start enabling these new features for all Gmail and Google Apps users at 12pm PST today. As is typical for new releases in Gmail, Google will roll this feature out to all users over the "next day or so."
The new chat functionality will work on PCs with Windows XP or Vista, as well as on Macs with OS X 10.4 or later. The plugin will work with all the major browsers, including Google's own Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.
From what we have seen so far, the videos integrate directly with the standard chat function in Google. To get started, you have to first enable this new functionality from the 'Options' menu at the bottom of a Gmail chat window. After that, all you have to do is select the contact you want to speak with and click on 'Video & more' in the lower-left part of the chat window. From there, you can then start a voice or video chat.
We have not been able to test the video and voice quality of these chats yet, but we will update this post once we get a chance to try it out for ourselves.

Skype?

Interestingly, Google Talk, Google's desktop chat program does not have any video functionality yet, though Google enabled voice chat for Google Talk a long time ago. By adding voice and video chat, Google is clearly going up against Skype, which has made video chat one of its main features in the latest version of its software.

Watch this video to learn how You can spam-proof your business

Image by chronos_tachyon via Flickr

Google Message Security, powered by Postini, is a hosted service that helps your business focus on legitimate email and provides you with a spam solution that runs itself.

Want to learn more? Download this whitepaper or visit our website.