For a few years now, I’ve heard many refrains of the following line: Facebook will *beat* Google. Over the weekend, I realized this may be a false construct. I’ll briefly explain why. One of the reasons Google is so valuable is because its search algorithm surfaces results that are extremely relevant (though this is currently under question). In exchange for this relevance, Google makes billions by targeting ads against the keywords in our search queries. Today and into the future, I believe Facebook will simply be more relevant than Google do our daily lives, and because its service will provide this social relevance, it will by proxy be a more valuable company, both emotionally and in terms of market capitalization. Therefore, Facebook will *eclipse* Google in terms of relevance and book value, but it won’t “beat” them — Google will be around for a long, long time.
