Cary Grant's impoverished aristocrat in The Grass is Greener is a study in insouciance. When his wife, played by Deborah Kerr, is swept off her feet by Texan millionaire Robert Mitchum, Grant seems unperturbed, but we can sense his pain. He is trying to look composed, but underneath he is seeking the brashness and confidence that will win him back his wife.
Like these love rivals, the two most successful companies on the web, Google and Facebook, come from very different places.
Google's revolutionary proposition distances it from all those websites seeking 'stickiness' - the retention of visitors for as long as possible. The search engine's purpose is to draw in visitors and send them away again as quickly as possible. For its users, the point isn't to hang around.
Google is the ultimate crowdsourced business. Its PageRank system hinges on the number and quality of sites presenting links to other websites. This is how it measures the relevance of its content to users.
But it doesn't stop there. The billions of searches that occur every day give Google a unique insight into what people are interested in, what they think, say and buy. All this data is used to make the search engine more effective. It gives Google a huge competitive advantage - this data allows the search engine to improve its yield from every visit.
Facebook exists at the other end of the spectrum. It is built for leisurely browsing - checking out your friends' updates, connecting with new people. The average member uses the site for 34 minutes a day, and half its users log in daily.
The social network has 500m users. Their interaction with each other - their public messages and activity such as pressing the 'like' button - creates a social graph. Facebook has powerful data at its fingertips - about what people are interested in, what they think, say and buy.
This mutual appreciation of data is why Google and Facebook are eyeing each other with jealousy.
Earlier this year, Facebook unveiled the Open Graph Protocol - a code that integrates web pages into social graphs (Facebook uses it to give any web page the same functionality as a Facebook page). Just as Google's algorithm values inbound links to websites, causing SEO practitioners to 'linkbait', Facebook values 'likes' - the means by which users express approval of things on the site.
Facebook, then, has effectively published an SEO formula for searches on its site, something which is expected to result in an outbreak of likebaiting.
Google's foray into social networking, Orkut, has not gained traction outside Brazil and India. Recently, though, it has upped the ante. Its buzz service allows users to share links, pictures and updates with friends through a Google account, while it is rumoured that a major offensive in the social space, entitled Google Me, will compete directly with Facebook.
It should be noted that Facebook search is a substitute (but not a direct replacement) for Google search. The open graph initiative is designed to make the most of the fact that Facebook's members are increasingly using it for search.
So, while Google doesn't want to turn into Facebook, it has good reason to desire some of its functionality.
Equally, Facebook doesn't want to be Google, but it wants a slice of its action.
Just as Grant and Mitchum's characters never confront each other directly, Google and Facebook are denying their ambitions for each others' territory. But just because they haven't come to blows, don't write off their passion.
Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level
30 SECONDS ON ... GOOGLE BUZZ
- Google buzz is the search engine's latest attempt to tap into the social networking phenomenon. Contained within its email service, Gmail, buzz lets users share pictures, videos and web links with friends.
- Buzz's unique proposition is the way it combines traditional email with the kind of features we have come to expect of social networks such as Facebook. Buzz integrates the sharing functionality with the user's inbox, 'so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time'.
- Mobile Gmail users can tag the files they are sharing with geographical information, while an app lets them add buzz to Google Maps. This means that whenever files are shared, the sender's location is revealed on the mapping service.
- Buzz users can connect directly with third-party social web services such as Twitter and Flikr. According to Google: 'Our goal is to make buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations.'