When charged with finding out the latest and greatest in the search-marketing world, one might be hard-pressed to find anything that’s really newsworthy. Besides the recent merger of Bing and Yahoo!, there hasn’t been a juicy search marketing story to hit the industry in quite some time.

Social media, on the other hand, has no problem staying newsworthy. Whether it’s a new location-based check-in application or a privacy issue, social media is always in the news. Maybe that’s why Google is rumored to be creating its own social network. Google misses the days when it covered the proverbial front pages and was the center of the industry’s attention.

However, no one can say that Google is struggling. In fact, Google has remained the top search engine for years now. So is this just a case of jealousy? Not likely. Google may have the search spotlight, but Facebook continues to expand its portfolio. Users that once turned to Google for the answers now also turn to their Facebook friends (and the relevant content located within the site).  With Facebook’s rapid growth, Google is trying to stay one step ahead by creating a social network that could compete with the “likes” of Facebook.

So far, Google has kept quiet on its social-network plans (dubbed to insiders as “Google Me”), but what is known is that some of the greatest minds in the industry have now been hired by Google. Most recently, Google hired Angstro co-founder Rohit Khare, known for building innovative tools for social media.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, Vic Gundotra, who is vice president of engineering at Google, pledged that Google is serious about social. But is it too little too late? After the failure of Google Buzz, Google is in a tough position. Ten years ago, Google was said to have revolutionized the industry. Now, its efforts border on playing catch up with Facebook.

And to make things more interesting, Facebook is rumored to be creating an advertising network to compete with Google’s AdSense. That’s a “Clash of the Titans” story for another day.

For right now, though, do you think Google can create a social network to compete with Facebook? Or will it slowly be dethroned by Facebook in its quest for global domination?