Google Panic: Facebook May Dethrone Orkut In The Nation Of A Billion Minds

Poor Google. Despite launching a social network dubbed Orkut many moons ago, the site failed to take off anywhere outside of Brazil and India (despite its original focus being upon the US).

Although the social did very well in both of those nations, it looks as if the search engine giant may need to come up with a new strategy, as Facebook may have captured the nation of a billion minds.

India looks like it is about to fall to Facebook. In May, 2010, Facebook attracted 18 million unique visitors in India, compared to Orkut’s 19.7 million (comScore). In the past year, Facebook grew 177 percent from 6.5 million Indian visitors, compared to 35 percent growth for Orkut. When the June numbers come out, Facebook may very well surpass Orkut in that country. Indeed, Google’s own Trends for websites shows Facebook edging out Orkut in India last month. (via TechCrunch)

This probably explains why Google is so focused on rolling out Google Me to the masses (and yes, it does exist).

Google can not afford to lose out in India, especially since its market is rivaled by only China, the latter which Google lost due to ethical reasons.

It will be interesting to see what Google does to counter Facebook in India, although the company probably needs to come up with a new strategy outside of an ad blitz.

For now it looks as if Brazil is still firmly in Google’s hands, although time will only reveal on whether Google will lose its strong hold in South America as well.

(Image credit: ComScore via TechCrunch)

Originally posted on July 8, 2010 @ 12:59 pm