Google Inc. is gaining ground against Facebook Inc. thanks to a controversial tactic: requiring people to use the Google+ social network.
Google over the past year has boosted the Google+ operation by integrating it with the company's top-tier properties, including its Web search engine, Gmail, YouTube, business listings and the Android mobile-operating system.
People using Google to search for photos or customer reviews of a restaurant, for example, automatically are steered to the restaurant's Google+ page. In the fall, Google began requiring people who want to post their reviews of restaurants or other businesses to use their Google+ profiles to do so. The same rule applies for reviews of physical goods or mobile apps obtained through Google.
And for the past year, Google has automatically created a Google+ profile page for anyone who has signed up for a Google account-even just to sign up for Gmail. The Google+ profile page can be viewed by anyone, though the account holder can change a setting so the page doesn't automatically appear in Google search results. Google encourages new account holders to use Google+ to share photos and thoughts with friends or other Google+ users who share their interests.
The impetus for such integration comes from the top: Google Chief Executive Larry Page has sought more aggressive measures to get people to use Google+, two people familiar with the matter say. The CEO about a year ago pushed the idea of requiring Google users to sign on to their Google+ accounts even just to view reviews of businesses, the people say.
impetus：动力，促进，推动
Google executives persuaded him not to pursue the strategy, fearing it would irritate Google search users, the people say. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter.
irritate：激怒，引起不愉快
Google executives say more integration is coming. 'Google+ is Google. And the entry points to Google+ are many, and the integrations are more every day,' says Vice President Bradley Horowitz.
The initiative has been controversial within Google. Some programmers have called it a desperate effort to compete with Facebook, while others see the Google+ push as a way to make the company more relevant in the age of social media, several people familiar with the matter say.
Vic Gundotra, who is in charge of Google+, says he sees little controversy today. 'There was more resistance two years ago,' when the project wasn't well understood internally, he says.
Sam Ford says he signed up for Google+ on his smartphone because he wanted to use a feature that automatically uploads any new photo to a private folder on the Google+ site. But the 26-year-old Navy petty officer says he was disappointed that his Google+ profile page, which includes his name, was tied to a mobile-app review that he wrote recently on the Google Play online store.
Google is 'trying too hard to compete with Facebook, and if people aren't going to share willingly, they'll make them share unwillingly,' he says.
A Google spokeswoman says the company began requiring use of Google+ profiles to write reviews to improve the quality of the critiques, which was lower when people were able to leave reviews anonymously. The change also allows people to see reviews by their friends, she says.
anonymously：匿名地
Integrating Google+ with the rest of the company's properties helps users glean more information about apps, businesses, websites, products and -- most important for Google's business -- ads for those products, because the users are notified if their Google+ friends or other contacts recommend the items.
Google+ users are encouraged to create digital 'circles' of friends and spend time interacting with them on the Google+ site, akin to Facebook. Mr. Horowitz acknowledges that Google+ isn't the top site for saying 'Happy Birthday' to friends but says it is the fastest-growing social network ever. 'Google+ can be tremendously valuable to you even if you're not frequently posting and [instead] you're consuming recommendations from your friends on restaurants, products, services to help you travel,' he says. To get such benefits, people must be logged in to their Google accounts.
akin to：同类，近似 tremendously：非常地，可怕地，惊人地
'You'll go to search for a camp stove on Google, and you'll find that your friend just bought one, and you'll be able to ask him about it,' says Dylan Casey, a former Google+ product manager who now works at Path Inc., a smartphone-based social network.
The integration has helped increase Google+ usage. Google last month said 235 million people used Google+ features -- such as clicking on a '+1' button, similar to Facebook's 'Like' button -- across Google's sites, up from 150 million in late June.
By using its top websites to help Google+, the company has shown how far it is willing to go to battle Facebook to become the primary gateway for Internet users to communicate with each other and businesses.
Since Google+ made its debut in mid-2011, the Mountain View, Calif., company has had limited success getting people to spend time directly on the Google+ site. Research firm comScore Inc. a year ago estimated that Google+ users spent an average of three minutes on the site each month, versus more than 400 minutes for the average Facebook user. In the U.S., Google+ had nearly 35 million unique visitors in October -- well below Facebook's 240 million, comScore says.
versus：与...相对
Because using Google+ requires that people sign in to their Google accounts, Google will be able to blend its mounds of data about individual users' search habits and the websites they visit with their activities on Google+. That is a potential boon to Google's online ad business, from which the company derives about 95% of its more than $40 billion in annual revenue, excluding its new Motorola hardware unit.
boon：恩惠，福利
Although Google doesn't reveal a user's name to advertisers, Google uses information about the person's Web visits and interests to help marketers target ads more accurately, Google says. It says information from Google+ also improves ad effectiveness because a user can be notified if, say, a friend recommended a particular product. Mr. Gundotra, the Google+ chief, says the company won't share data about individual users with advertisers and that it is important for the company to maintain users' trust.