Chrome, YouTube and Search are all available in the same space. That space is Spaces, Google's latest effort in the social networking sector.
Google hasn't gone into detail about the reach and number of users its Google+ platform has attracted. Through surveys and inferences made from the entire market, however, analysts and their research firms have pegged Google+ as being clearly out of the top three social networks — spots already occupied by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
About a year ago, Stone Temple Consulting released a study that concluded that about 1 percent of Google's 2.2 billion users actively use Google+.
Google's reluctance to detail Google+'s user base only supports notions that the social network remains outside looking in. But with high-profile hirings and now the introduction of a new social network, Google doesn't appear to be giving up on creating social spaces online.
"We wanted to build a better group sharing experience, so we made a new app called Spaces that lets people get people together instantly to share around any topic," Google says of its newest social network. "With Spaces, it's simple to find and share articles, videos and images without leaving the app, since Google Search, YouTube and Chrome come built in."
Users of Spaces can invite friends from other social networks via email, phone call, house calls or "whatever way you like."
Google's integration of Search into Spaces allows users to browse for conversations or to share content to ones that already exist. And it takes just one tap to create a new Space for just about anything.
Spaces is available now for iOS, Android and desktop. And for Gmail users, Spaces is also available via mobile Web.
Though it may be hard to see the hook for Spaces right now, considering all of the network's functionality can be found elsewhere, Google is going to be "experimenting" with the social network during its annual developers conference this week in San Francisco.
"We've created a space for each session so that developers can connect with each other and Googlers around topics at I/O, and we've got a few surprises too," Google says.
