Google follows Facebook path

SAN FRANCISCO - Google, stepping up competition with Facebook, will add a layer of social-networking features to its main products, says chief executive Eric Schmidt.

The changes would come in this year, Schmidt said yesterday. The remarks followed comments by a Facebook executive that Google was building a new social-networking site.

The company is playing catch-up with Facebook, the top social-networking service, which passed Google as the most-visited United States website this year.

Weekly traffic at Facebook exceeded Google's for the first time in March, according to Experian Hitwise.

Google's current social services, including its Buzz and Orkut features, haven't been able to match Facebook's growth.

"Facebook is the leader in the emerging social web," said Ray Valdes, an analyst at Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner.

"Google is Facebook's most direct competitor, because Google is dominant in the previous generation of the web, the content-centric web."

Stephen Dolan, commercial director for Asia at Facebook, said yesterday that Google was expected to start "a fairly significant social-media platform". He said personal communication was increasingly being conducted via social websites.

"Conversations that are intimate have really moved to a social-networking forum, and commercial conversations kind of sit outside of that," said Dolan, speaking at the Asia Media Summit conference.

Google has increased its pace of acquisitions this year, partly to shore up social features.

The company, based in Mountain View, California, has made more than 20 purchases this year, compared with about five deals last year.

- BLOOMBERG