Google Merges Google+ Into Search 279
SharkLaser writes "Google is today launching an update to their search engine. This update is intended to bring you personalized search results based on your Google+ friends, sharing, pictures and likes. They're calling it 'Search plus Your World,' and the update is going to automatically personalize all search results to a greater degree than before. These personalized matches will appear along your normal search results. For example, if you are searching for images of babies, Google will now personalize your search results and give high preference to baby photos from your Google+ circles. TechCrunch is speculating that over time they will also start adding search results from all the other Google services, including Google Docs, Gmail, Contacts, Music, Voice, wallet and so on. Today's launch also uses Google+ data for another purpose: helping you search for information about people on Google+. For example, if you are searching Google for 'music,' Google will now display relevant people and pages from Google+, like Britney Spears, Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg."
Update: 01/10 18:40 GMT by S : Changed the summary to reflect that the idea of adding search results from other services was speculation from TechCrunch, and not something Google said.
Re:Please no (Score:4, Interesting)
How is this different from MS integrating IE into Windows to beat Netscape? Google has a monopoly on search and is harming other industries such as social networks, maps and finance sites by integrating them by default into the search, whereas other competitors like Map Quest don't have this chance and are dying off slowly like Netscape did.
The article actually covers that a bit.
Since the launch of Google+, Google has been putting a lot of muscle behind promoting and integrating the service into its core products. Fire up a new Android 4.0 device, and youâ(TM)ll be prompted to create a Google+ account if you havenâ(TM)t already. Theyâ(TM)ve given it TV ads, not to mention a priceless promotion on its homepage.
So not only search, but they're using Android and every other product to tie the user to Google+. They're going to get hit hard by antitrust issues.
Improve results (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not sure this will actually make results more relevant. I mean I have and I would assume most other people have a kind of mental catalog of if now what they have stored, what types of things they have stored and know how and where to look for it.
If I wanted pictures of friends and families babies, I'd probably go to my images/family folder in my home directory, or to that person's facebook or G+ page. Same thing for e-mail if I am looking for personal correspondence I'd search my own e-mail archives, even if those happened to be g-mail.
Seems to me when I am keying something into Google.com I am looking for things primarily that are actually quite impersonal. What's the address of this business?, who is a good local plumber?, how to make that netfilter rule work, does anyone have Slackware packages or buildscripts for $project, What is a $object?, How does $object work?, etc.
These things are not going to be found in my own library of stuff if they were to be found there I'd already be using a much more target search. I honestly think my own stuff would be more of a distraction in Google results most of the time.
It will be interesting to see if people find any value in this.
Re:Please no (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed. I tried Bing last week because Google results were so useless and my first thought was 'hey, this looks just like Google did before it started sucking ass'.
Re:Please no (Score:5, Interesting)
So not only search, but they're using Android and every other product to tie the user to Google+. They're going to get hit hard by antitrust issues.
So for the dozen or so screens also baked into Android that allow use of Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other social and email services they will need to add a "Join Now" button? I know the SEC and the Justice Department are separate entities but it just feels like as long as Facebook is still privately held the feds don't really give a crap about what happens in social network land (beyond the extent that they can monitor it all at will).
Re:"Real names" policy still in play? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently pretty well. I have my "real name" G+ page and a G+ pages business page or whatever you want to call it, for what amounts to an electronics club I promote/curate/whatever you want to call it.
As near as I can tell, someone looking at the club page has no idea I'm the one running it.
So you create a real name page for the real you which you never use, then create a business page for "aestetix" which you always use, then I think you're all good?
As a bonus I guess you'd have your "real name" page for Mom to circle, and everyone else can circle the "aestetix" page.
I have not tested this extensively because I'm not paranoid enough to care, but this seems to function.
Do we need to block this in our Google ad blocker? (Score:5, Interesting)
We're releasing a Google ad blocker [sitetruth.com], which is in test now. It lets one ad through, and blocks the rest, to de-clutter Google results. We could add some other blocking capabilities. Let me know what Google won't let you turn off. If you try this, and there are new "social" ads which slip through, we'd really like to hear about it. Thanks.
Google's recent direction seems to follow H. L. Mencken's line "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Google is getting better at answering dumb questions, and worse at answering hard ones. The problem is that Google now assumes the question is dumb, auto-correcting in the direction of common words and questions. That's yet another problem with feeding "social" data into search. Then they try to patch this by profiling each user with "search customization". But that assumes there's a pattern to an individual user's hard questions. (This leads to the concept that search customization should estimate how smart each user is, a data item which can be sold to advertisers to generate sucker lists.)
Re:Please no (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good job, Google (Score:2, Interesting)
scroogle (browser plugin) lets you search goog and yet not put up with their increasingly cumbersome, intrusive and advertising-laden search results.
I also am giving bing a chance, more and more. what does that say about goog's abuse that geeks like me (started using linux back in the v1.2 kernel days) move away from goog and toward the previously 'evil empire' ?
goog: you are doing way too much evil these days. I'm actually sick and tired of google this and google that. can't wait until your company gets 'reset' like all big behemoths do. and it will serve you right, too.
Google+ integration ruined Picasa (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Please no (Score:4, Interesting)
You are not using Google. The websites you are visiting are using Google.
Some sites display ads from Google, some use Google Analytics, etc. The website may be using
While YOU didn't "ask for google to be part of that 'conversation'", the web site you are visiting did ask them so they have every right to be there. Your real problem is not with Google. It is with the websites you are visiting. They are the ones inviting Google in. Most-likely, they are doing it because they don't want to be bothered with coding their own statistics and analytics engine but they could be using other services as well.