In addition to making all of our private data gradually public, the Facebook team is also trying to be our home on the Web.
Today, I logged in a Facebook account (not mine) and saw the banner below. First, I do not log in this account "regularly", so technically their catch phrase is false (but I guess the concept of false advertising doesn't apply for Facebook's internal communications). I think the Facebook team is trying to convince non-experts of Web politics at large to start all their online activities from Facebook by naively setting it as their homepage.
What would be so different if most Web users entered the Web through Facebook?
The big threat I identify is search. If I open my Web browser and systematically land on Facebook, I will probably end up using their search engine first because it will save me the five seconds required to open a new tab and load Google.
Facebook is 400-million users wide, and could reach a billion in a few years. The more people use the Facebook search engine, the less they will use Google. Google's ad revenue is destined to experience a downfall as Facebook keeps growing. Who benefits from this? Microsoft, Facebook's two-year old search partner, who brought a value boost to the Harvard-born startup in exchange for a strategical partnership against Google. Microsoft blocked the door, Google will never be Facebook's search engine, and with Mark Zuckerberg's intent to make private data public, Facebook becomes one of the most active Website on the Internet for Google to crawl and send traffic to.
We're doomed! Facebook's creator is known to be some kind of a black-hat coder and thinker. Their latest round of investment from Russia smelled like dirty laundry. Facebook is not a trustworthy company anymore, but it's going to be around for a while, so might as well get used to the idea that international crooks are handling our online identities.
Facebook used to be cool, but it just became a one-man power-trip :(
