Google recruits you in march toward world domination

If Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan lived in modern times and had 1 million servers at their command, I'd imagine they'd take the approximate shape of Google Inc.

The benevolent behemoth of search engines unveiled their latest foray into world domination Monday in the form of Friend Connect, a new service for Web site operators that allows their users to connect and interact without leaving their sites.

So what makes Google think it can compete in an already crowded and heavily fortified social networking market?

Well, in short, the company's previous success should do the trick. Like that time they thought they could break into the crowded search engine market, a conflict in which casualties are still being counted. Remember that?

Despite the fact that jumping headfirst into the social networking game is a bit like trying to get involved in a land war in Asia, Google is approaching the problem in a truly novel way. Yes, much like going for the continent of Asia in a game of Risk, Google's latest venture is hard to defend in the saturated market, yet it comes with ample benefits -- like you, for instance. [Ed. note: multiple Asia references entirely coincidental]

That's because Friend Connect lays siege to the traditional premise of sites like Facebook and its creepy uncle, MySpace, which both gather your "In Real Life" friends in one "walled garden." Instead, the service allows Webmasters to add Google-generated code to their own Web sites in the form of social gadgets. These social gadgets can take the form of reviews, message boards, photo sharing tools or member galleries.

Essentially, Friend Connect would allow its users to connect with each other wherever they are, eliminating that certain element of elitism that characterizes most social networking sites (and looks to be growing more popular in others). In the meantime, Google can expand an already growing user base that logs in to services like Gmail, Google Reader and Google Documents -- and one day put that base to use as foot soldiers who will wipe out the last vestiges of rebellion in the new Google Empire™.

Aside from the eventual takeover however, Friend Connect could mean interesting things for the Intarwebs.

For one thing, the product opens up a whole new world to relatively inexperienced Web designers, democratizing the process and helping people more effectively share ideas. I guess that's a great danger if Web-inclined religious zealots begin cleaning up their Angelfire-esque Web pages that reek of 1997, but I'm confident common sense can replace seizures as an effective deterrent to some of these locations. Chances are that the religiously inclined will be more attracted to sites that effectively put the technology to use in a good way, instead of say, damning you to hell interactively.

But spreading the wealth in this way isn't just for Webmasters. As services like FriendConnect expand, viral communication will as well, meaning the things people like will get more playing time, while the stuff that sucks falls through the cracks and forces creators back to the drawing board.

Friend Connect also has the potential to provide the Internet with something it has been in need of for years -- a degree of accountability. Associating login names that users take with them from site to site with comments on message boards and other similar user feedback systems may mean an end to things like Godwin's Law and other aspects of the Web that accelerate my declining faith in humanity. I can envision a world where I won't have to filter YouTube comments to prevent a sudden and fatal brain aneurysm.

It just goes to show that a world dominated by Google might not be so bad, what with all the peace, harmony, convenience and human connections. Heck, if they finish the job before roboticists give an advanced version of Pleo a taste for human flesh, the company might even be considered our savior.

Like Jesus, with more whitespace.