"This is a new and very strategic position, as Google knows it is late on this front and is appropriately humble about it. In Google's view, conceptually, there are two ways to tackle social, each impacting who may be successful in this senior post: 1) building an innovative offering specifically in this area; or 2) developing the capability and integrating social into Google's existing portfolio."

June 29: Digg co-founder Kevin Rose that a "very credible" source said Google would be launching a Facebook competitor, called Google Me "very soon."

July 5: Matt Brittin, Google's UK chief executive, doesn't comment on or deny the "Google Me" rumors in an interview with . He also says there is room for more than one giant in the world of social networking: "Facebook is an absolute phenomenon but there are other social networks which are successful too. We've got Orkut, which is fantastically successful in India and Brazil."

July 10: reports that Google "secretly ", the company that created and a slew of other popular games on Facebook.

TechCrunch says Zynga will be part of a service called Google Games, which will launch later this year.