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Google to jump on the social networking bandwagon

Google Inc. plans to tweak Gmail to make it easier for its users to post and share status updates, in an attempt to inject the Web mail service with social-networking capabilities similar to those popularized by Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook is increasingly seen as a serious Google competitor, as it has broadened its scope of offerings into areas that users typically associate with Google. For example, people increasingly search the Web from within Facebook using Microsoft's Bing engine.

Google has a social-networking site, Orkut, that is popular in certain parts of the world, like Brazil, but is far from matching Facebook's appeal.

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