Facebook has declared all-out war on its enemies, starting first and foremost with Google. The relationship between the two is fractious at best these days, and the cold war looks to be turning hot between the two billion-dollar tech companies. Google has made jabs at Facebook’s control of social contacts, and now Facebook is returning fire with what they have dubbed as the Gmail killer, a free Facebook email service.
Gmail is now the third most-popular email service after MSN/Hotmail (361 million) and Yahoo (273 million), with 193 million users. However, it’s gaining ground on its competition and distancing itself from its smaller competition. Unfortunately for all the free webmail services, Facebook has an estimated 500 million active users, most of whom would no-doubt love one less thing to check when they get online. By integrating webmail with its internal communication, Facebook just might end up becoming the world’s largest email system by default.
Augie Ray, senior analyst for social computing for Forrester Research, says the move into email “makes sense just largely from a reach perspective. Facebook has grown so large that we forget that it still has room for growth. Facebook as much into competition with AT&T as it is now with Google.”
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