They are angling to take on Facebook:
Brian Stoler, a Google software engineer, wrote that the company is adding profiles to search results in order to "give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name." That sounds sensible enough. But some observers see a more ambitious agenda. Why would Google want to encourage people to create profiles of themselves? Because it aims to take on Facebook. By promising improved vanity searches, the thinking goes, Google is getting us to tell the company a lot more about ourselves. In the process, it's garnering enough information to build the world's largest social networkand make a fortune besides.
2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan