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Google on Monday announced a preview release of Google Friend Connect, a way for Web publishers to add social features to sites without programming.

“We’re seeing social capabilities get baked into the infrastructure of the Web,” said David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, at a press conference to launch the service. “[They're] increasingly not tied to any one site, to any one source of friends, or any one type of application. We see the Web moving towards an end state where people can use any apps on any Web sites with any of their friends.”

Shared information will include friends lists, profile data, status and presence details. Since Google is not itself a social networking site (although it does operate Orkut), it seeks to provide a gateway between them and third party sites that wish to use the data.

As Google has so far failed to make any significant inroads with a social networking site of its own, Google Friend Connect mirrors Google’s similar efforts like OpenSocial to position itself as a platform provider with tools that power social networks. While Facebook and MySpace’s efforts focus more on plugging into established social networks, Google Friend Connect has the rest of the Internet in its crosshairs with simple tools that any owner can embed in their site.