I don’t give a whole lot of credence to rumors, it seems that they are only right about 20% of the time, but I do enjoy reading up on them. When people started talking about Google Me, I, like always, was skeptical.

It’s not that there isn’t any reason for Google to want to be in the social networking race, in fact there is plenty of reason(mainly advertising, Google’s biggest business) but how likely does it seem that Google would make yet another social networking site (in addition to Orkut)? The real question is should Google make something new?

I have to admit, as a big fan of Google, I’d probably be one of the first to sign up. Google doesn’t get everything perfect, but they generally give people what they want. I think that they would have a lot of users on day one, though I doubt that everyone would simply abandon Facebook. They could certainly make the privacy settings simpler than Facebook’s currently are. Google could also add a lot of new dimensions (not to mention a full featured implementation that’s less Facebooky).

It would also add a new competitor to Facebook, which could be a really good thing seeing as how a lot of people aren’t sure they trust Facebook lately (see here and here though interestingly enough, Facebook is still trusted more than traditional media according to one poll). So sure, there are a lot of improvements and reasons that Google could make in the social networking area, but should they?

What do you think?