Rather than collaborating to develop the promised land of online brand advertising, Facebook and Google are competing with each other in this area. Image source: Brent Humphreys
Larry Page must be in a good mood. It was autumn of 2007, one of the founders of Google was on a business trip in Europe, he had to spend five days visiting the company's operations in Zurich, London, Oxford and Dublin. The journey was full of fun, it was an opportunity to closely observe the continuous expansion of the Google empire. But the most exciting part of this week was not in Europe, but in Silicon Valley, where Google was planning to invest in the most eye-catching new company in Silicon Valley - Facebook. Google once wanted to acquire Facebook, but Facebook shareholders were not willing, so investing in it was an attractive option, thus bringing together these two most important companies in the Internet industry. Facebook was not only a rapidly growing social network, but also a potentially huge personal information database. The way Internet users behave on Facebook is different from any other website: they use...