Google Places vs Facebook Places

Google Places vs Facebook Places: It’s Search vs. Social:

On the surface, Google Places and Facebook Places would seem to have a lot in common.

Both services are out to create a landing page for every local business in the world.

Both services allow local merchants to “claim” their pages, giving the merchant some editorial control over content on the page.

And both services no doubt expect to grab a chunk of what is projected to be a $32B digital, local advertising market by 2013 by claiming the middleman position between the merchant and the end user.

But where the two services break from each other – and in a non-trivial way – is in their respective distribution strategies.

Google relies on Search.  Facebook relies on Social.

And this is where things start to get interesting.