Such a Beautiful Way to Break Our Hearts

Once upon a time, Google decided they needed more market share on The Internets, so they dreamed up a vision of making it more a more social environment. To hear engineering director David Glazer tell it, humans are social creatures that must, well socialize. Thus, Google's brainchild—Friend Connect—was born (OK, seriously? You come up with a name like Google and then the best youcan do for a networking platform is Friend Connect?) Moving on...

The basics of this program would be to take the features of Myspace and Facebook and make them largely available through other websites. With Friend Connect, folks can tap into their social information like contacts and photos from anywhere on the web, taking social networking to a whole new level. To help launch the project, Google had partnered with Facebook, but
the budding relationship is no more. Citing "competing interests," Facebook's withdrawal from the negotiations means that Facebook users cannot sign in to websites using Google's new service.

The situation promises to be about as newsworthy as the long-ago Aniston-Pitt split because of the highly publicized launch. Inquiring minds want to know what's going on with Zuckerberg that he keeps turning the money away at the door? The debacle, if it reaches such a status, should prove to be very interesting indeed.

Do you think Zuckerberg knows what he's doing with a company that could potentially earn him billions? And just a quick side question: If the unholy alliance were to happen after all, would US Weekly start referring to the companies by a single name, like they do for celebs? If so, we're thinking Goofbook. [Washington Post]