Facebook, rumored for some time to be planning its own e-mail service, may finally be on the verge of doing so in a move that would send a shot across the bow of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
TechCrunch, a leading Silicon Valley technology blog, reported on Friday that the social network plans to announce a Web-based e-mail service complete with @facebook.com addresses at an event in San Francisco tomorrow.
Facebook boasts more than 500 million members around the world and offering a personal e-mail service would create a powerful challenge to the established e-mail giants — Microsoft’s Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Google’s Gmail.
Hotmail currently has 361.7 million as of September, according to online tracking firm comScore, followed by Yahoo with 273.1 million and Gmail with 193.3 million.
TechCrunch said Facebook’s planned Web-based e-mail service is part of a secret project known as “Project Titan” that is “unofficially referred to internally as its ‘Gmail killer.’”
“While it may only be in early stages come its launch on Monday, there’s a huge amount of potential here,” TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid said.
The report comes amid a recent bout of sparring between Facebook and Google over data sharing and Silicon Valley engineering talent.
Google last week blocked Facebook from importing Gmail contact information over the Palo Alto, California-based social network’s refusal to reciprocate and share data about its users.
The Wall Street Journal reported that in a bid to stem defections to rival firms such as Facebook, Google has given all of its 23,000 employees a 10 percent pay hike.
According to the Journal, roughly 10 percent of Facebook’s employees are Google veterans.
“Facebook has the world’s most popular photos product, the most popular events product, and soon will have a very popular local deals product as well,” Kincaid said. “It can tweak the design of its webmail client to display content from each of these in a seamless fashion.
“There’s also the social element: Facebook knows who your friends are and how closely you’re connected to them; it can probably do a pretty good job figuring out which personal e-mails you want to read most and prioritize them accordingly,” he said.
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