????眼下，谷歌公司（Google）正面臨一系列嚴峻的（有可能最終無法逾越的）挑戰。而且，毫無疑問的是：這些挑戰已赫然在望，因為Facebook的崛起正日益威脅谷歌公司在互聯網的統治地位。

????谷歌要想保住其領先位置，剛剛履新的首席執行官拉里?佩奇就必須為社交網絡制定新的規劃。同時，作為新任首席執行官，他還必須使投資者確信他能掌控這一大局。

????以下四點有望幫助佩奇光復谷歌公司的統治地位：

1.坦承谷歌公司面臨問題。

????佩奇要向員工們承認公司正面臨來自網絡社會化的巨大威脅：如今互聯網的頁面瀏覽量中有25%來自對社交網絡的訪問，更要命的是這些服務還恰恰都是谷歌公司的敵人——Facebook公司提供的；同時，谷歌在任何社交網絡應用中都不占有可觀的份額。他還應該向員工們宣布，谷歌的下一個生命周期必須全面進軍社交網絡服務。此外，佩奇還必須為分析人士提供更多更真實可靠的信息。

????谷歌的高管團隊試圖掩蓋其在社交網絡上的軟肋，但華爾街可不會上當。盡管佩奇保持緘默，但雙方的嚴詞交涉無法避免。實際上，如今的投資者老謀深算，洞若觀火，如果既不坦承問題，又不承認機會，只會強化一個事實，即公司的首席執行官根本沒有認真對待自己的業務。佩奇原本有機會先發制人，利用近期的分析證明，谷歌已經做好準備，將利用社交網絡提供的機遇大干一場。如果這番證言條理清晰，又有實際行動支持，還能有助于凸顯谷歌未來所蘊藏的潛力，而這往往是與華爾街交涉時的一個有力的籌碼。

2.證明谷歌了解網絡演變的趨勢。

????Facebook并不僅僅只是一個風靡一時的網站而已。恰恰相反，網絡的整個本質都已被它顛覆，從一堆存在服務器上供谷歌扒梳搜索的網頁變成世界各地的人們彼此連接，分享生活的平臺。同樣重要的是，越來越多的網絡功能正通過應用程序來實現，而不再以HTML的形式出現。過去，為了適應谷歌，網絡開發者必須與HTML兼容，那時終端用戶也頗為寬容，用戶體驗的門檻不高，如今這種日子已經一去不返?，F在，網絡內容發行商必須做到顧客至上——這就意味著，為顧客提供的內容必須以社交網絡、視頻和移動設備為基礎，在時間、空間和方式上完全滿足他們。佩奇需要清楚地表明，他理解網絡新時代的“根本法則”；隨后，他要清晰地闡釋這些法則，并明白無誤地闡明其不同之處，以使其業務部門——從搜索和廣告這樣的賺錢機器到社交網絡的試驗品——能據此再造自我。比如，如今的世界已充分互聯，電子郵件的使用正在走下坡路，Gmail應當順應變化，更新交流方式，正如七年前，當電子郵件的發展進入上升通道時它對這一領域大舉革新那樣。而谷歌的應用程序部門則需要重新思考：當用戶多數時間都聯在網上時，應用程序如何才能超越其僅僅是作為微軟公司（Microsoft）Office辦公套件替代品的狀況。

3.招兵買馬，更新人才庫。

????僅僅對現有人員進行內部調動是不夠的；谷歌公司是時候空降一些拯救者了。比如，谷歌需要爭取像瓦蒂姆?拉威如斯科這樣的名士加盟，他剛剛加入了Facebook公司，協助指導新聞和媒體方面的事務。谷歌還需要修改其招聘方案，招徠類似剛剛加盟了Facebook的行業新星，還有創業型人才。谷歌曾開創過令人叫絕的人力資源方案，吸引了一大批人才，掀起了搜索引擎浪潮；而現在人才大戰正如火如荼，Facebook擬上市的計劃已把谷歌的美食大廚和個人培訓特別優待拋在身后，吸引了最優秀、最聰明的人才前來加盟。谷歌需要更新方案，展示更勝一籌的戰略，吸引新一代新星助陣。

4.展示自己在社交網絡上的成果

????最后，佩奇應當展示谷歌在大量全新的、社交屬性超強的產品和創意上所取得的進展，這些正是谷歌現在所急需的。除了從公司外部引進，公司內部應當醞釀自己利用社交網絡的創意。佩奇的獎金計劃是個開端，但這不足以在谷歌燃起星星之火，并最終力克Facebook。還未進入搜索市場， Facebook這家私營企業的市值已逼近谷歌的50%。 Facebook目前還沒有涉足搜索領域，那是谷歌的后花園；而同樣重要的社交領域卻已證明是谷歌的雷區。佩奇應當日夜致力于這四大戰略，同時就取得的進展與投資者、分析師和員工保持持續不斷的溝通。而至于溝通方式，他需要開展的是個人化的深入接觸。

????他是谷歌的首席執行官；這是他的職責所在；同時，這也是最高管理者工作中不可或缺的一部分——而直到最近他才主動挑起這副擔子。

????佩奇與投資者的首度收入會議對社交網絡只字未提。佩奇似乎錯誤地以為，把社交網絡和新近崛起的主要對手掩蓋起來，分析人士和關注谷歌動態的媒體就不會注意到社交媒體這一新興勢力，也不會注意到谷歌在社交媒體領域無所作為的現狀。然而，事與愿違，Facebook高達780億美元的估值好比巍峨的雷尼爾山（Mt. Rainer，美國境內著名的火山高峰——譯注），佩奇顯然無法掩蓋。

????谷歌不能無視眼前這座山峰般的絆腳石。谷歌目前缺乏明確的社交網絡戰略，投資者并不是唯一注意到這一點的群體：為谷歌公司產品進行編碼的工程師們也要知道，公司的高層想要扳倒、而不是無視這座大山。

????漲漲跌跌，乃市場常態。但是，像社交網絡這樣的機遇可謂稍縱即逝。如果佩奇本人和谷歌公司對Facebook如此清晰可見又近在眼前的威脅視而不見，他們慢慢揮霍的將遠不止是市值而已。他們是在拿谷歌的卓越做賭注。而這，將是一個巨大的錯誤。

????艾歐威茲是媒體公司Wetpaint的聯合創始人和首席執行官。

????Google is confronting a series of rugged (and, perhaps, ultimately insurmountable) challenges. And make no mistake: these challenges loom large, because Google's dominance of the Internet landscape is increasingly being threatened by Facebook's rise.

????If Google (GOOG) is going to maintain its leadership, still-new CEO Larry Page needs to have a plan for the social Web. And, as the new CEO, he'll need investors to be confident that he's got this handled.

????There are four things Page could do to renew Google's dominance:

1.Admit that Google has a problem.

????Page needs to acknowledge to his employees the enormous threat posed by the socialization of the Web: already, 25 percent of all page views on the Internet are not only social, but served by Google's enemy, Facebook; meanwhile, Google has no significant share whatsoever in any social activity. Google's CEO should also be declaring to his employees that Google's next life stage must be fully social. In addition, Page must offer analysts a more substantive and authentic message.

????When Google's senior executive team sweeps its social Web weakness under the rug, Wall Street isn't fooled. And Page's silence doesn't stop the tough conversation from happening. Indeed, in this age of investor sophistication and watchfulness, admitting neither problems nor opportunities only heightens the fact that the CEO isn't taking his business seriously. Page could have preempted the hard-edged conversation with his analysts recently by proving that Google is ready to fully participate in the opportunity presented by the social Web. If framed well, and backed by demonstrative action, this could even help to highlight the potential upside in Google's future, and that's always a positive when it comes to dealing with the Street.

2.Show Google understands how the Web is changing.

????Facebook isn't just another really popular Web site. Rather, the entire nature of the Web has been transformed from a bunch of pages on servers that Google crawls, to the world's people connected to each other and sharing their lives. Just as significant, more and more of the Internet's capabilities are delivered via apps, rather than on HTML forms. Gone are the days when Web developers would make everything HTML-compliant just for Google's sake, while end-users had forgivingly low bars for their own experiences. Now, customers must come first to publishers – and that means providing them with content when, where, and how they want it in the social networks, in video, and on mobile devices. Page needs to clearly show that he understands the "ground rules" of the new Web; then he needs to lay them out crisply, with their differences distinctly noted, so that his business units – from the moneymakers of search and advertising to the experiments in social media – can start remaking themselves accordingly. Gmail, for example, should be reinventing communication for a fully connected world in which email usage is on the decline, just as it reinvented the category when email was still on the rise seven years ago; and Google Apps needs to rethink how applications can be so much more than mere Microsoft Office stand-ins when its users are connected to the Web most of the time.

3.Recruit hard for new talent.

????It's not enough to rotate the deck chairs and the bodies that sit in them; it's time for Google to parachute in some rescuers. For example, Google needs to win notables like Vadim Lavrusik, who just joined Facebook, to help guide social content in news and media; and it also needs to remake its employment proposition to attract the up-and-coming stars like those who have joined Facebook, as well as those who have started their own companies. Google developed an amazing human resources formula that attracted a slew of talent to fuel the search wave; but now the talent wars are underway, and Facebook's pre-IPO buzz has leapfrogged over Google's gourmet chef and personal training perks to attract the best and the brightest. Google needs to reinvent its formula and demonstrate a winning strategy to attract the next generation of stars.

4.Show your work on social.

????Finally, Page should be demonstrating progress on a host of new, socially supercharged products and ideas that Google desperately needs right now. In addition to pulling from the outside, the company should be incubating its own ideas to take advantage of the social Web. Page's incentive compensation plan is a start, but it doesn't go nearly far enough to light a fire that will help Google out-compete Facebook, a private company that has already garnered nearly 50 percent of Google's own market capitalization – without having even signaled an entry into the search marketplace yet. Google's home turf of search is uncharted territory for Facebook, but, just as importantly, the social terrain has already proven a minefield for Google. Page should be working on these four items each and every day. But he should also be communicating his progress in these areas on an ongoing basis to investors and analysts, as well as employees. And, as for how, the outreach needs to be personal. ??He's Google's CEO; it's his responsibility; and it's an integral part of the top job – a job, by the way, that he recently chose to assume and shoulder.

????In his debut earnings call with investors, Page made nary a mention of social. By sweeping the social Web and his new chief competitor under the rug, Page seemed to be making the false assumption that the analysts and media covering the company wouldn't notice the rising force of social or Google's lack of social progress. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, because Facebook's $78 billion valuation represents a lump beneath the rug that's nearly the size of Mt. Rainier.

????Google can't just ignore this mountainous marketplace impediment. And investors aren't the only ones that take notice of Google's lack of strategy here: the engineers coding Google's products need to know that their leaders want to attack, not ignore, the mountain.

????Markets go up, and markets go down. But opportunities like the social Web come along only so often. So, if Page and Google remain radio silent on Facebook's clear and present threat, they'll be frittering away much more than their market cap. They'll be gambling with their greatness. And that would be a huge mistake.

????--Elowitz is co-founder and CEO of media company Wetpaint.