Yahoo! and Google aren’t trying to become another social destination like facebook or myspace, instead they are trying to take it to a whole new dimension. By incorporating several of the applications and features that social networking sites already contain the companies are trying to build, once again, upon the social dynamics of the web. Connecting users to their similarly minded browsers.

While I don’t see this being a negative step I also don’t see it as a huge step forward. I think social networking sites are destinations for a reason. Most people don’t trust, nor care to share, a lot about their web habits with friends or families. The goal of these new developments would allow users ”to share photos, videos, news reading habits or calendars with their friends and receive alerts about what friends are up to.”  While I know Google and Yahoo! are both competing to become your all in one source for everything you need on the web I feel like it defeats the purpose of the world wide web. It might work for some people but I’m a fan of the web’s vastness and want it to continue to expand not shrink down to two or three monopolized sites. Sure, I use Google for most searches, but when I want to read the news I check CNN, and when I want to see what my friends are up to I call them… or stalk their facebook.


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