Is Google About to Launch a Facebook Killer?



Should we brace ourselves for another round of tech news headlines with the word "killer" in them? According to Digg founder Kevin Rose, Google is about to launch a social profile service called, aptly, "Google Me." Rose stated on Twitter earlier today that he heard a "huge rumor" from a "very credible source" that Google is about to unveil what is apparently a Facebook competitor, no other details forthcoming.

While this is strange for so many reasons (since when do startup CEOs break such high-stakes "rumors" on Twitter?), we'd have to say that, if this isn't some kind of weird account hijacking and the rumor turns out to be true, we're not surprised nor should Facebook be fazed -- Google Buzz was supposed to compete with Twitter and we all know how that turned out. We do however have a few questions, namely has Google given up on Brazilian social network Orkut? At this point it seems as though the search company is just throwing social networking ventures against a wall and seeing what sticks.

We've reached out to both Kevin Rose and the Mountain View-based Google for comment and will update this post if they respond.

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