Every site you go nowadays, it’s easy to weigh in and say your thoughts due to a tiny blue button with the phrase “Sign In With Facebook”. Whether you want to sign up for a newsletter subscription or you want to be a member of a new site, the Facebook Connect button lets you automatically supply basic personal information so that you won’t need to fill out blocks and blocks of the same old data.
However, the top news for today is Google’s stab at making the same magic happen. After conquering the web search and indexing corner, Google hopes to capture the same wealth of information and data that Facebook has through Facebook Connect. Recently, Google also launched a service that allowed users to sign up using their Google or Google+ accounts. This picture from The Verge illustrates what the new Google Sign In button looks like.
This system is not without its flaws. Just recently, a bug on Facebook Connect caused widespread exasperation and annoyance to the general web public after it caused what tech reporters tout as an Internet-wide blackout. Facebook Connect went down because of the bug and it took with it several websites that are largely dependent on the rich social interaction of Facebook members. It’s possible that the same thing could happen with Google’s platform but since it’s still in its infancy, we’ll see in the future.
Little flukes like that aside, Facebook Connect has by and large made web surfing easier. It also allowed Facebook to dominate much of the web because this feature essentially allowed Facebook to monitor the web activity of its users. By observing sign ups on specific web pages, Facebook was able to deduce what a specific user’s interests may be. With Google Sign In, Google hopes to capture some of that data for itself and use that to leverage the other products and services that the company offers.
This push by Google is another milestone in what seems to be a major tech war between the leaders of the technology sector today. While it seems like they’re just disrupting the competition and copying one another, the true wealth in competitions like this is the variety of new innovations and advancements that they produce to gain an edge over the others. Due to this tech wars, inventions arise faster than ever and we, as consumers, are the ones to benefit from it.