Hear any good new lately about Facebook or Google today? I won't chide you about residing under geological formations if you haven't. Let me sum up for you: In one fell swoop the game has changed. Digerati darling FriendFeed was scooped up by Facebook and Google let us in on Google 2.0. How we search and find things has been altered and, yes, this is bigger than Microsoft and Yahoo teaming up with Bing.


First let me explain FriendFeed. If you know what it is, skim ahead, I won't be offended. FriendFeed was one of the first "lifestream aggregators" If you look at my FriendFeed page you'll see my tweets, posts from various blogs, Flickr pictures, bookmarks I've shared. Essentially the life I am sharing with the world online.This is the key point here, I am choosing to aggregate together the content I am already sharing online (I'll get back to this later).


We all know what Facebook is (if you don't, then all chiding about living under rocks is fair game), so today Facebook scooped up FriendFeed not because of the aggregation technologies, but for its search technology. FriendFeed search is very good, within its own ecosystem of course. Many think that Facebook's real plan here is to create a universe of information that gives people everything they need without having to leave the confines of Facebook...all the while still keeping Google out. How is this accomplished? By Facebook making more of what you post "public" (at least the Facebook version of public).


Not what I signed up (begrudgingly I admit) on Facebook for, I didn't sign up to have all this stuff searchable. Then there is Google.
The folks at Google didn't get to where they are now by being complacent. They got where they are by being innovative. Google, the engine that never stops. Google ... has just gotten better. Today we got a look at Caffeine (aka Google 2.0) a new, re-written, faster version of Google. While the Facebook-FriendFeed announcement probably wasn't something that Google knew about ahead of time, I'd certainly bet that letting the whole have a peek at Caffeine today is no accident. Google is reminding Facebook, and the rest of us, that they are very much in the game.


I gave Caffeine a whirl this evening. The results are good, I can't tell if "better" is the word, but faster certainly is.


Beyond today's hype-o-rama and everyone getting their opinions in (myself included), the real test will be about 3-6 months from now. Will Facebook users change their habits? Will more data be flowing into Facebook with little or none flowing out? Will Google roll Caffeine out of beta and into production this year of next?
Those are the questions that only time will tell. As for me, I'm going over to Facebook to remove some of my data inputs. You can find me on the rest of the Internet. The open Internet.

Here are what a few others have had to say about it: