Google+ already has 50 million users

By Dave Neal

SOCIAL NETWORKING TRACKER Paul Allen has revealed that by his estimates Google+ has already hit the 50 million user mark.

Allen, who is the founder of Ancestry.com, revealed the numbers on his Google+ account, of course, and explained that the big burst in users came since Google opened up its social network to the general public.

"Yesterday (give or take a few days) Google+ likely crossed the 50 million user mark. Since being opened to the general public (over age 18) last week, Google+ has been growing by at least 4 per cent per day, meaning that around 2 million new users have been signing up each day," he wrote.

"Given this momentum, it is hard for me to imagine a scenario where Google+ doesn't end up with hundreds of millions of users. It's just a matter of time."

Fifty million people is not all that many though, particularly when you compare it against the real people almanac that is Facebook. Allen said that Google might challenge that social network with Google+, but added that for now the increased competition should be taken as a good thing.

"None of this is necessarily bad news for Facebook," he added. "Competition can make companies much better... I think we are witnessing the most exciting battle in tech history as two well-funded, fast-growing, highly-profitable, genius-led Silicon Valley companies are competing from very different starting points to affect how we find information, how we connect with people, how we view the world, and how we spend our time."

It could be bad news for Facebook however, if more and more people start reacting to the increasing tide of bad press about that company, its changes and their impact on personal privacy. Google might already be capitalising on users' desire to move away from a social network that retains control over your data, or it might be making the most of its already massive user base. 

Dead Sea Scrolls Go Online in Israel Museum Project With Google

By Gwen Ackerman 

The Dead Sea Scrolls, so ancient and fragile that direct light cannot shine on them, are now available to search and read online in a project launched today by the Israel Museum and Google Inc. (GOOG)

“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it accessible and useful,” said Yossi Matias, managing director of Google’s R&D Center in Israel.

The people who wrote the scrolls hid them in caves along the shore of the Dead Sea, probably about the time the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and are generally attributed to an isolated Jewish sect that settled in Qumran in the Judean Desert. The manuscripts were discovered between 1947 and 1956.

Sections of the scrolls are on display at Israel Museum’s Shrine of the book and rotated every three to four months so as to minimize exposure. Only a facsimile of the Great Isaiah Scroll is on display. The Google tool on the Israel Museum website makes entire scrolls accessible and allows browsers to zoom into the text as well as read its translation in English.

“This gives you a way to understand the beginning of biblical history,” said museum director James Snyder. “Nothing could be more important.”

The project follows a Google project that went live in January and put online an archive and search function for photos from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. The world’s largest Internet search engine is also working on a project in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority that will make available on the Internet fragments of the scrolls so they can be studied by scholars.

Cultural Opportunity

“The opportunity is amazing here for culture and heritage information,” Matias said. “We are trying to expand this and address these historical and heritage archives and there are great things that can be done here.”

Five of the eight scrolls housed at Israel Museum since 1965 have been digitalized, including the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Temple Scroll and the War Scroll. The Great Isaiah Scroll can be searched by column, chapter and verse, including the famous “and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” It is accompanied by an English translation tool and includes an option for users to submit translations of verses in their own languages.

“For us, the Dead Sea Scrolls couldn’t be a more important iconic cultural artifact,” said Snyder. “Any opportunity for us to bring them to the widest possible public audience and offer the opportunity to really begin to understand what these amazing documents are all about is something that we embrace.”

Google’s Chief Executive Larry Page is pushing into new markets such as mobile and display advertising, while trying to preserve the company’s leadership in search, an area that generates most of Google’s revenue. Shares of Google have dropped 0.3 percent in the past 12 months, compared with a 1.1 percent decline of the S&P 500 Index.

Both Israel Museum and Google declined to say how much the project cost.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.