There seems to be more evidence of a cohesive strategy on Microsoft's part given their investment in Facebook and purchase of Skype.
On the other hand, given the invitation only rollout of Google+ it looks more like Google was forced to do something quickly before they were ready. Being first out the gate is a tactic, not a strategy.
As for Facebook having the kinks worked out - with the better part of a billion users they've got the big one solved.
@brudgers Google typically releases new products to the market slowly whilst announcing them, look back at services like Gmail, that was initially invite only and in beta for a number of years.
I doubt this is actually Facebook's answer to Google+ most likely something they've had on the cards for a while. They've still got plenty of time whilst G+ is in it's infancy.
Google also releases new products slowly and then lets them die. Gmail as a commodity product doesn't have the chicken and egg problem that a social network does - and there's no good example of Google solving a chicken and egg problem which depends on brand loyalty rather than technology (qualifications due to the possible argument that advertising revenue based search was a chicken and egg problem albeit one which was solved based on technology rather than consumer loyalty).
I don't think that Facebook/Skype is a response to Google+'s rollout. I think Google+ is a tactical response to a strategy has been developing for a long time (measured in internet years).
On the other hand, Facebook's announcement probably is a tactical response to Google's timing given the massive investment in buzz creation which has manifested itself in the last few days.
Android was successful because it was attractive to carriers and handset makers, but consumer faith in the Google brand had a lot to do with it, as well. I wouldn't say it was the deciding factor, but the fact it was made by Google rather than random company x probably influenced buying decisions.
> As for Facebook having the kinks worked out - with the better part of a billion users they've got the big one solved.
Not sure where you're going here... Facebook and video chat aren't synonymous, so how does having millions of users mean they're going to get it right?
> Google was forced to do something quickly before they were ready
Can you explain why you think Google+ isn't ready? What's "broken"?
Facebook has solved the big problem for social networks - lots of people use it.
The evidence that Google+ wasn't ready to be a Facebook killer is that it is invitation only. Living in a college town, I was around Facebook when it was exclusively for students. Facebook's growth from exclusive to pervasive was enabled by the fact that students move on get married and have babies - looking at pictures of her first granddaughter is what sold Facebook to mom.
On the other hand, the bloggers and programmers invited to Google+ will remain bloggers and programmers. They're already married and have kids and more importantly already update Facebook with photos for grandma and uncles.
Don't get me wrong, Google will make money off this thing even with limited adoption and the assumption that it will ever roll out of perpetual beta (or preview in this case) is not a settled matter based on Google's history.
You seem to forget that Google+ is in field trial, and was launched only 2 days ago. I don't expect any product as big as that to fully launch overnight.
"The evidence that Google+ wasn't ready to be a Facebook killer is that it is invitation only."
Google knows the best way to release a product - especially one in unfamiliar territory like the social space - is not to flip a giant switch and hope that when the whole world starts using it, nothing goes wrong. For one, the scalability issues when you're Google are enormous: they know they'll have tens of millions of 7-day users the first 7 days. You don't want to screw that up. That doesn't even touch on product design.
But taking a random sample of people and getting a hopefully-large-enough subset of their friends is not what you want for a social product: you want all of your friends in it, or you just get frustrated and go back to your previous solutions. Facebook /nailed this/ with their multi-year long staged rollout by targeting colleges: already self-contained social ecosystems where almost all of a student's friends are going to be other students; you start with one college, then two, then slowly ramp up until you can flip the big switch. Google simply does not understand this, and keeps falling back to their experience with Gmail, which was a fundamentally different beast.
"Everyone in the City of New York now has Google+: enjoy!"
(Also, I'm somewhat confused by the question, as I specifically demonstrated something that is akin to a suggestion by way of demonstrating what Facebook did right... why are you asking this? There are a million ways to do "invite closed communities rather than random people", like allowing Google Apps domains to join rather than people: that way you at least could get "my company/organization circle" or something; you could imagine inviting e-mail domains, so "anyone with ucsb.edu e-mail addresses now gets on", etc.: the problem is that I now know a small handful of my friends who are using Google+, but as most of my friends can't I will rapidly tire of posting there when I can post to Facebook.)
> The evidence that Google+ wasn't ready to be a Facebook killer is that it is invitation only.
That's evidence that Google's technical people aren't insane. You don't just throw open the doors to a project of this size. The technical implications of going from zero to millions of users on a new service are huge.
On the other hand, given the invitation only rollout of Google+ it looks more like Google was forced to do something quickly before they were ready. Being first out the gate is a tactic, not a strategy.
As for Facebook having the kinks worked out - with the better part of a billion users they've got the big one solved.