????保羅?亞當斯在硅谷炙手可熱。他是一位才華橫溢的產品設計師，戴著方框眼鏡，說話帶有濃重的愛爾蘭口音，瘋狂崇拜激情四溢的技術狂人。作為谷歌（Google）頂尖的社交網絡研究員，谷歌新社交網站Google+背后的理念很大程度上便出自他的創意：Google+中靈活的“圈子”功能使用戶可以輕松把好友分成“摯友”或“大學哥們”。但他并未能在谷歌將自己的理念推向消費者。在去年12月的一場天才爭奪戰中，他選擇加盟位于帕洛阿爾托以東10英里的Facebook，幫助其設計社交廣告。對此，亞當斯在博客中解釋道：“谷歌重視的是技術，而不是社交。”

????科技公司之間相互競爭的情況由來已久，但很少有像谷歌與Facebook這兩個網絡豪強之間的競爭如此激烈和殘酷。為了爭取像亞當斯這樣的人才，吸引用戶眼球，爭奪廣告收入，它們會不惜一切代價。雖然兩家公司并未像甲骨文（Oracle）與惠普（HP）般公開詆毀挑釁，也沒有如微軟（Microsoft）與網景（Netscape）般明刀明槍地交火，但雙方都為競爭投入了巨大的籌碼。兩家公司都希望成為未來網絡的主宰——而最終的結果將會影響我們獲取信息、溝通以及進行交易的方式。

????Facebook與谷歌：王者之爭

????交戰一方Facebook是社交網絡中的“王者”，希望鞏固自己的地位，掌握所有人的網絡生活。而另一方谷歌則控制著全球的海量信息，引領人們的搜索方式，它希望在互聯網從超鏈接時代向以人為本轉變的過程中保持自己的統治地位。

????谷歌聯合創始人兼CEO拉里?佩奇（4月份上任）僅比Facebook的馬克?扎克伯格年長11歲，但他們卻屬于不同的網絡一代，并且擁有截然不同的世界觀。在佩奇的世界里，一切均從搜索開始。用戶通過搜索來查看新聞，查找鐘愛的鞋子，追蹤最喜愛的名人動態。如果需要了解醫院的醫療條件或決定需要購買的電視型號，用戶首先要進行搜索。而且在這一領域，谷歌的程序經過十多年的改進已經如魚得水。但近幾年，網絡世界卻在逐漸向扎克伯格的世界傾斜，這種變革甚至堪稱殘酷。在扎克伯格的世界里，我們不再通過搜索獲得新聞，而是等著朋友來告訴我們新鮮資訊，告訴我們他們喜歡的電影，鐘愛的品牌，甚至去那里吃美味的壽司。

????現在，Facebook已經成為新互聯網世界的核心，很多人一天的在線生活也是從這里開始。而Facebook成功的秘訣在于讓公司在網絡中傳播，并允許他人分享用戶的朋友圈子。結果，成千上萬個網站和應用像衛星一樣，圍繞著Facebook運行。我們可以打開點評網站Yelp查看好友如何評價街邊新開的咖啡廳，到在線音樂服務網站Spotify，讓好友幫我們挑選音樂，或者與好友一起玩社交游戲公司Zynga開發的游戲。而對于佩奇來說，更糟糕的是谷歌的程序根本無法捕捉這些社交活動，導致這種程序，甚至于谷歌搜索本身的精確性日益下降，進而日益與人們的生活脫節。????

????Paul Adams is one of Silicon Valley's most wanted. He's an intellectually minded product designer with square-framed glasses, a thick Irish accent, and a cult following of passionate techies. As one of Google's lead social researchers, he helped dream up the big idea behind the company's new social network, Google+: those flexible circles that let you group friends easily under monikers like "real friends" or "college buddies." He never got to help bring his concept to consumers, though. In a master talent grab last December, Facebook lured him 10 miles east to Palo Alto to help design social advertisements. On his blog, Adams explained, "Google values technology, not social science."

????In the long history of tech rivalries, rarely has there been a battle as competitive as the raging war between the web's wonder twins. They will stop at nothing to win over whip-smart folks like Adams, amass eyeballs, and land ad dollars. There's no public trash talking à la the Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) vs. HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) smackdown, nor are the battle lines drawn as clearly as they were when Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) took on Netscape, but the stakes are immense. These companies are fighting to see which of them will determine the future of the web -- and the outcome will affect the way we get information, communicate, and buy and sell.

????Facebook and Google: Head-to-Head

????In one corner is Facebook, the reigning champion of the social web, trying to cement its position as the owner of everyone's online identity. In the other is Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), the company that organized the world's information and showed us how to find it, fighting to remain relevant as the Internet of hyperlinks gives way to an Internet of people.

????Although Larry Page, Google's co-founder and its CEO since April, was born just 11 years before Mark Zuckerberg, his counterpart at Facebook, the two belong to different Internet generations with different worldviews. In Page's web, everything starts with a search. You search for news or for a pair of shoes or to keep up with your favorite celebrity. If you want to learn about a medical condition or decide which television to buy, you search. In that world, Google's algorithms, honed over more than a decade, respond almost perfectly. But in recent years the web has tilted gradually, and perhaps inexorably, toward Zuckerberg's world. There, rather than search for a news article, you wait for your friends to tell you what to read. They tell you what movies they enjoyed, what brands they like, and where to eat sushi.

????Facebook is squarely at the center of this new universe, and much of what people do online these days starts there. But Facebook's masterstroke has been to spread itself across the web and allow others to tap your network of friends. As a result, thousands of websites and apps have essentially become satellites that orbit around Facebook. You can now go to Yelp to find out what your Facebook friends say about the new coffeehouse down the street, visit Spotify to let them pick music playlists for you, or play Zynga games with them. To make matters worse for Page, much of this social activity can't be seen by Google's web-trolling algorithms, so every day they (and by extension, Google) become a little bit less accurate and relevant.