'Google Me' Is Real, Will Launch in 2010

By Alexia Tsotsis Tue., Jun. 29 2010 at 9:48 AM

Categories: internets

Image | Andrew Nilsen

Watch your back, Facebook -- Google is coming...

A source very close to the matter told SF Weekly that "Google Me" does in fact exist, and that Google already has many engineers on the project, a potential rival to Facebook. The search engine is "getting very serious about social," and some early conjecture pegs "Google Me" as an OpenID project, which would give Google a leg up on the closed Facebook, as well as a chance to erase the past failures of social services Orkut, Wave, and Buzz.

Pundits have had a field day since Digg founder Kevin Rose tweeted out and then retracted a "rumor" that Google was starting a social network to compete with Facebook on Saturday. To add to the speculation dog pile, former Facebook CTO and current Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo answered a "Google Me " related question on his own platform last night, basically confirming Rose's statement.

"This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this."

Why is a project so big leaking through Kevin Rose, you ask? What's next, is Twitter's Evan Williams going to post "Google Me" screencaps as a Facebook status update?

As for timing, our source tells us it will launch this year, first guess October, which means industrious tech CEOs have at least four more months to jump on the Rose/D'Angelo bandwagon and milk this story for all the publicity it's worth.

In the meantime, we're holding out for the screencaps.

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