Google Inc., the world's most popular search engine, added a social-networking feature to its Gmail e-mail software, taking on market leader Facebook Inc.
The program, called Google Buzz, allows users to share photos, clips from its YouTube video site and updates from Twitter Inc., Google said Tuesday in Mountain View, Calif. It also lets users comment on other subscribers' posts.
"This is another very compelling evolution," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said at the event. "You have the meeting of social communication and productivity."
Google hasn't been able to transfer its dominance in Internet search to e-mail and social networking. Gmail is the world's third-most-used e-mail service and Google's Orkut social site ranks fifth, according to researcher ComScore Inc. in Reston, Va. Facebook, the top social-networking service, updated its site last week to make it easier to check messages, notifications and friend requests.
Buzz, which has a post feed similar to Facebook and Twitter, will be available on mobile devices including Apple Inc.'s iPhone and those that run on Google's Android software, the company said. The program includes contacts that a user frequently e-mails. Posts can be private or public.
The company is rolling out Buzz to Gmail accounts over the next few days and plans to offer it to businesses and schools using Google Apps.
Google rose $2.97 to $536.44 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading Tuesday. The shares have fallen 13 percent this year.
Google also introduced an updated version of its Mobile Maps, which can show the location of people posting items on Buzz. The location feature also finds businesses and other locales to help users identify where they are.
MySpace, owned by New York-based News Corp., and San Francisco-based Twitter were the No. 2 and No. 3 social sites in the United States in December, behind Facebook, according to ComScore.
Some of Gmail's original engineers now work at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook. They left Google to start a company called FriendFeed, which Facebook bought last year. Facebook said that it has 400 million users worldwide, double that of a year ago.
Mr. Brin declined to comment on the current talks between the company and the Chinese government, except to say it was "hard to operate" there under the circumstances."
First Published: February 10, 2010, 5:00 a.m.
