Google Betting Its Google+ Systems Know What's Best For You 109
Nerval's Lobster writes "But at this year's Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google announced that it has a plan to make Google Plus users more engaged, courtesy of new features backed by a handful of data-analytics tricks. Google Plus postings now feature Google-generated hashtags that, when clicked, direct the user to related content from across their network. From a backend-infrastructure perspective, that sort of thing leans heavily on Google's semantic analysis and the ability to make the right connections between various pieces of data. Google Plus will also automatically highlight certain photos out of dozens or even hundreds of shots. Say you went on vacation to India and took some photos of your significant other in front of the Taj Mahal; Google Plus will leverage its database of information to recognize that as a prominent landmark and pluck those photos out of the pile as 'special.' In the words of that posting on the Google+ Blog: 'Your darkroom is now a Google data center.' Are all these nifty, analytics-intensive features enough to change the larger fortunes of Google Plus? That's the big question. Google has a handsome-looking platform, one that performs certain activities with a high degree of polish and zip—but is that enough to counter Facebook?"
Google chat users affected (Score:5, Informative)
As part of the big roll out of these changes, a lot of google chat users have discovered their most frequently used contacts have been automatically "Blocked on Google+ [google.com]", despite not themselves not having Google+ accounts. People have been left with no option other than to sign up to Google+ to access their "Blocked" circle to see what contacts have been blocked, and unblock them.
Google does not work like that (Score:4, Informative)
That data then becomes Google's product which Google then sells on businesses and organisations
Google will NEVER sell data of its customers...not because of any moral code, but because it is simply not profitable. They sell *targeted* advertising space on services offered for free, Like TV...or newspapers. Its why Google make Billions.