About
Search, plus your world
Or as many people are calling it - social search.
You can read Google’s full announcement here or watch the video above.
As much as there is going to be outrage over Google’s choice to create social search using just Google+ as far as I’m concerned it was inevitable.
Google and Facebook working together would be amazing! But it’s never going to happen, well in my dreams maybe. Those of us who love the internet want it to be a resource where we have complete access to all the information out there, but at the same time targeting individuals in search results also makes sense too. Data relevant for you. But the problem is, are those search results actually relevant? At the moment those algorithms aren’t that clever.
Google’s social search plans with Google+ were inevitable because, well, they created Google+. At the end of the day Google is a search engine. It is powered by search as its main function and with the social web becoming so significant through the likes of Twitter and Facebook, Google needed to find a way of integrating social into its platform. Hence Google+.
I don’t entirely agree with MG Sigler when he says:
“Google is using Search to propel their social network. They might say it’s “not a social network, it’s a part of Google”, but no one is going to buy that. They were late to the game in social and this is the best catchup strategy ever.”
I think Google+ is part of Google. It’s the social search arm of their product. It’s not a social network in the same way that Facebook or Twitter gets the name social network. Facebook and Twitter were created to connect people through those platforms. Social search for them came as a secondary evolution of their platforms. They didn’t set out with that vision (or at least I don’t believe they did). Google on the other hand created Google+ with the sole purpose of creating a social search arm to Google. That simple. Those that buy it as a social network are missing the bigger picture as far as I’m concerned.
Google isn’t the only one to blame though. Facebook is just as resistant to let Google and others in to view the links it curates within its own platform. Ideally everything would be open.
Twitter’s response was interesting and one I share:
“For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.
Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.
We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”
Can we rely on Google, or anyone else for that matter, to give us the best links to the internet that it can? We may have to use Facebook, Twitter and Google independently to decide for ourselves the best links. Which isn’t going to happen.
It’s just this:
“The unwillingness of Facebook and Google to share a public commons when it comes to the intersection of search and social is corrosive to the connective tissue of our shared culture. But as with all things Internet, we’ll just identify the damage and route around it. It’s just too bad we have to do that, and in the long run, it’s bad for Facebook, bad for Google, and bad for all of us.”
:(
