I think Google has been long on the road to having their own social network. We already have profiles. To beat facebook, Google is going to have to play it close to the chest. I don't think we will see anything for another six months at least. Google needs to wait for anti facebook sentiment to come back up.
Regarding who needs another social network, these things die all the time. Just as quickly as people will say "Who still uses MySpace?" you can find someone to ask about how many other dead networks? Facebook may be going strong, but can it sustain another four or five years as top dog?
facebook is changing the entire web. you can't compare what they are doing right now with what happened to friendster or myspace.
1) At its peak myspace never had more US traffic than google. Facebook already does.
2) Myspace did not create an authentication system for other websites, and here's the key, the use of Facebook's brings immediate traffic benefits to those sites through social integration. Some of those sites (imdb, cnn, yelp, pandora) already have instant personalization. In a nutshell Myspace is a website and Facebook is a platform.
Google does not have an equivalent product and may not have the means to create one because while your Mom might be on Facebook, that doesn't mean she has a gmail account. Think about it for a second.
3) Social is changing how people search and discover. In terms of social search, Facebook is already way ahead of Google because of their connected and consenting userbase.
Bing never caught up to Google in search, Google cannot catch up to Facebook in social. Google is going to need something radical and I don't see what it could look like.
Its sure not going to be some open auth - buzz - google profiles combo that gets no adoption.
