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Google makes friends with network sites to battle Facebook
Google has signed up MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and Bebo, a favourite among UK teenagers, to its new OpenSocial system that aims to link services on some of the web’s most popular sites. It has also recruited the business networking service Linkedin, one of Asia’s favourite social networks Friendster and its own Orkut network, the market leader in Brazil, as it goes head to head with Facebook.
Google has been searching for ways to counter the phenomenal growth of Facebook. Last week it lost out on a chance to take a stake in the business when Microsoft secured a 1.6% shareholding in a deal that valued the three-year old technology firm at $15bn (£7.2bn).
The OpenSocial network will give developers of applications such as games, video players and photo albums that sit on social networks, a standard software kit that will allow their applications to work across multiple websites.
