Why would a search engine company like Google participate in social networking? Because of the indirect benefit the company derives, a Google official said at the Adobe Engage conference in San Francisco on Monday. “Google really does believe that its fate is directly to the Web,” said Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google. He is working on Google’s OpenSocial social networking initiative to develop API standards for social networking platforms.The more time people spend on the Web, the more likely they are to do a search and that is where Google makes money, Kraus said. Thus, Google is involved in social applications, he said. “As goes the Web, so goes Google,” said Kraus.He also said Google would love participation in OpenSocial by Facebook, which has not been involved. Kraus also said he had no idea when the Google-backed Android mobile applications platform would support Adobe’s AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for running Internet applications offline. AIR was the star attraction at the conference.Also during the conference Monday, Salesforce.com Chairman/CEO Marc Benioff stressed how the company is firmly in the Adobe camp and is not pondering Microsoft’s rival Silverlight browser plug-in software software – at least not at the moment. “We are not looking at Silverlight today, so we have not really had the demand,” Benioff said. If that changes, Salesforce.com of course would look at Silverlight, he said. “Today the action and the excitement, especially interactive user interfaces on the the Web, remains in kind of the Flash, Flex, AIR area,” said Benioff. Adobe at Engage announced Force.com Toolkit for Adobe AIR, to add offline capabilities to the company’s Force.com platform for third-party applications. Technology Industry