Social Networking, Facebook Vs. Google | featured news

Since its debut in late June, Google+ has captured much of the tech world's online conversation.

Could social networking company Facebook Inc.’s big news on Wednesday be a partnership with Internet video calling firm Skype Limited? That’s the word on the street, according to reports. The partnership would allow friends to chat with each other, and potentially give it an edge over Mountain View-based Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), which has launched its own Google+ social networking service.

Skype and Facebook have both declined to comment. But an announcement is expected at 10 a.m.

Google Inc co-founder Larry Page will take over as CEO from Eric Schmidt, a surprise that signaled Silicon Valley's most powerful Internet company was taking the offensive against fast-moving rivals like Facebook.

This may go down as the year that social networking trumped searching as America's favorite online pastime. In 2010, Facebook pushed past Google to become the most popular site on the Internet for the first time, according to two Web tracking firms. The title caps a year of rapid ascent for Facebook in which the social network hit 500 million users and founder Mark Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year. It also marks another milestone in the ongoing shift in the way Americans spend their time online, a social change that profoundly alters how people get news and interact with one another - and even the definition of the word "friend."

Google said it will no longer allow the social network Facebook to grab information about Google users' social and professional contacts through Gmail, Google's email service.