Why Google and Facebook hate each other: 3 simple reasons

Three simple reasons.

1) Competition for Adverting Dollars
First things first – money. Google makes its money off Google Ads – advertisers buy space on its search results pages. So a certain brand of hairdryer will turn up in the sponsored box when you search for “hairdryer”.

So far, fine but – Facebook makes money out of ads too. And it’s trying to suck the online advertising dollar away from Google. It has one trump card to offer to advertisers – very deep information about their consumers. What age they are, where they live, what other stuff they like. That’s very valuable.

Advertisers could spend on both of course, but more money spent on Facebook means less for Google and Facebook is more suited to big dollar branding campaigns than Google is.

2) They operate on different conceptions of the web
-Google supports an open web – with Google at the heart of it, indexing it.
-Facebook works on a private web basis – where what you can see is limited.
Facebook won’t let Google index their private pages. That takes away from Google’s reach over the internet.

3) Both want to be news power-brokers and your portal to the internet
Google wants to stay at the heart of the internet. It wants to be the first place you go when a news story breaks or if you want to find out about a certain area. Facebook is challenging its centrality. It’s dangerous for Google.
Facebook increasingly wants to be the centre of your internet experience. With the new Pages function and the wooing of media organisations, it’s no longer just about where you see stuff about your friends – it’s where you see posts from your favourite news sites and blogs – and shopping brands. It’s personalised to you because you’ve chosen what will feature in your news feed.
That’s a problem for Google.

Anna Leach

One thought on “Why Google and Facebook hate each other: 3 simple reasons

  • Have to disagree with your statement that Facebook is more suited for big brand campaigns. Most agencies would argue it’s hard to come up with a big brand campaign when Facebook only gives you a tiny box on the right side of the page to work with. Whereas with Google, you can do huge promotions on Youtube.com and get enormous reach through the Google AdX.

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