Hitwise blogged that the weekly market share of visits was 7.07% for Facebook and 7.03% for Google in the week ending March 13.

A loss for the open Internet

My opinion is that this represents a loss for the open Internet.

Although there are legitimate concerns about data privacy and some other concerns in regards to Google, in comparison to Facebook, Google looks like an angel.

Origins

Origins are important because the founders set the tone for the entire rest of the company as they hire people and pass on a corporate culture.

Compare the origin stories for the two Web giants: Google was born as a kind of cool and nerdy experiment. Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google as part of a Ph.D. research project. For the longest time, there were no ads at all on Google.

Facebook, on the other hand, was conceived in sin. I blogged before on Facebook’s dubious origins. It’s alleged that Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook while he was contracted by another group of Harvard students to create a Facebook-like site, all the while stringing the other group along making them believe progress was being made on their site. Money was foremost on Zuckerberg’s mind while he allegedly went to the extent of hacking competitors’ site to enhance his own.

The World Wide Web

Google is all about the World Wide Web, created in the early 1990s by Tim Berners-Lee as a connected group of hyperlinked pages and sites. The main focus of Google has always been to give you a search result for a web page and send you on your way to exploring the Web, hopping from one link to another.

Facebook, though, is a walled garden. Once you get on the site, you’re supposed stay on it. Even to get in, you need a login. Every page you view, every action you take is logged by the same, single site, instead of multiple sites across the Web.

JavaScript and cookies

You can use much of Google without logging in, including the main focus (searching). You can’t do the first thing on Facebook without logging in. Same for JavaScript, cookies, and so on.

Ads

Google’s the progenitor of nice, reasonable text-mode ads. Although Google has some other kinds of ads as well now, Facebook ads are the definition of obnoxious, and possibly scammy.

What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Google Will Index Facebook, Disqus, and Other JavaScript Comments
2. Heise’s 2-Click Solution for Facebook Privacy
3. Facebook Timeline Will Let You Know Who Unfriended You