Google Profiles

Google announced this week the launch of Google Profiles, allowing people to create profiles of themselves that can be selected to be made available on Google searches for your name. The incentive for people to create such profiles is pretty clear. Google verifies these profiles, giving individuals the capacity to control what people glean about them when they "Google them".

The implications to the internet could be pretty far reaching:

• Through these profiles, Google learns more about individuals, giving them more context to leverage in their expanded advertising efforts with DoubleClick and beyond. It is similar to the type of context that social networking properties are collecting. However, unlike the social networking properties, Google has an established advertising network to expand on with this data.

• There could also be a disruption to Linkedin. With Facebook controlling most communications amongst members of a social graph, Linkedin's core consumer value has been scaled down to enabling people to study other people's backgrounds prior to meetings, introductions, etc. If the Google Profiles become people's primary professional profile, then Linkedin's consumer value will slowly fade into the background, and Google may in fact broaden their profiles to encompass a flavor of social or professional networking as well.