Google Merges Google+ Into Search

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.

Comments

Please no

[recoiledsnake]

Make it opt-in instead of opt-out. Please don't junk up my search results.

Re:Please no

[masternerdguy]

Slowly they will make those results more and more dependent on Google+. Resistance is futile.

Re:Please no

[mystikkman]

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.

Re:Please no

[DCTech]

Google just doesn't understand why people want to use social networking sites and what people want. Here is blog post by a guy who worked at Google and decided to leave to Facebook, and here is another ex-Googler who worked on Google+. They're both saying that Google only catched upon social networking lately and didn't care about it at all before. Yet they still continue to make so stupid mistakes. And of course, here is a good article about the whole transparency thing at Google.

Re:Please no

[gmuslera]

There are a lot of companies that jumped late to the game and still did some hit, like Apple with MP3s or phones and even Google itself with search. The trick is doing it well. Will this move from google (or in general, the ongoing integration of all their services into/around G+) succeed or not? Time will tell

Re:Please no

[Trepidity]

I don't think it's entirely lack of understanding; part of it is, but part of it is having ulterior motives for their social network, which includes a design requirement that it's got to somehow 'synergize' with their search business.

Re:Please no

[ganjadude]

I am not a fan of the integrated search results But I have an honest question. How is google pushing its services "wrong" any more than fox showing an ad for the simpsons during an NFL game? If you are on that website (or network tv station) than wouldnt you expect, or even want information provided by that site or network? I dont want to see about jersey shore when im watching hell on wheels you know?

Re:Please no

[icebraining]

The difference is that Google Search dominates the market, while Fox doesn't.

Re:Please no

[MightyYar]

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.

They probably have a monopoly that is similar to MS's in the OS and Office markets. So the rule is that they cannot leverage their monopoly in search to push out competitors in other areas.

They do not have a monopoly in smart phones, so they can push competitors off of their phones entirely if they think it would sell. They can try to use Google+ to encourage people to use other Google products, but it won't help them at all because no one uses Google+. If they start using search to crowd out Facebook in favor of Google+, then they will probably get themselves in trouble.

Re:Please no

[GameboyRMH]

In terms of buying vs. building it's well-night impossible today, only the expensive Linux shops sell significant numbers of computers without Windows. Even if you build a PC, some shops that have contracts with MS won't sell you a CPU/mobo/RAM combo unless you buy Windows with it. Not kidding.

Re:Please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it not occurred to ANYBODY here that if Google were allowed to know a few things about you (via your G+ profile), that it could provide a much better search experience? Everybody's so determined to stick to their old ways, when this just the natural evolution in making search easier.

On top of all that, Google provides a button right there to remove any "personalized" results...

Why the anger?!?

Desperation?

[XxtraLarGe]

I guess they need to find some way to get people to use Google+...

Re:Desperation?

[Colonel Korn]

I guess they need to find some way to get people to use Google+...

And yet I think that this move creates one of the better reasons not to have a Google+ account.

This kinda breaks things for me

[OS24Ever]

When I'm searching it's because 'my world' doesn't know the answer and I have to go elsewhere. Filtering out people I don't know first makes it harder to find things.

If I had a google+ account I guess I would care, unless this forces me to create one which means I have an issue.

Re:This kinda breaks things for me

[TheSpoom]

The idea isn't increasing utility, the idea is promoting Google Plus.

Re:This kinda breaks things for me

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't sound like google is "filtering out people you don't know". Google will still search everything else that it already searches; if people in "your world" don't know the answer, then none of their results will appear for your search. And now, if someone in "your world" happens to have posted a useful answer but you just didn't notice before, that result might be surfaced.

It seems like any degradation in search quality would be an artifact of poorly ranking "personal results", not necessarily due to the simple inclusion of "personal results". Just like how your search also includes all the known spam sites in existence; just because the sites are part of the things searched doesn't mean they'll appear in your search results if they're irrelevant.

Good job, Google

[socrplayr813]

All this means is that I will never again sign into my Google accounts in my browser. You can't give me screwed up results if you don't know who I am. If it gets too much worse, I'm probably just going to bail altogether. Thanks, Google.

No more lmgtfy

[CharmElCheikh]

So now we won't be able to copy-paste a google search to someone to brag "AHAH ! First page, first result!" because everyone's result will be different. Not sure that's a great feature.

Re:Do we need to block this in our Google ad block

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I think Google must ultimately have the same natural contempt for their users that a rancher has for their cattle. They're a valuable product to be kept fat and healthy, but ultimately they're just a product being sold, and so you really don't want to become too familiar with them, or feel too much empathy for them, because your interests and those of your customers who buy them will always come first.

The human population of the United States no longer develops under the pressure of Evolution. Somewhere around the middle of the last century the driver of change went from being a process of Evolution to one of Domestication. We sold ourselves into bondage in exchange for short term happiness and all the physical possessions we could conspicuously consume. As a society, we now daily sidle up to the food trough that is commercial television, and "free" internet services like Google, Facebook, etc. where we are not the customer but in fact the product being sold to advertisers.

G.

Re:Use DuckDuckGo instead

[gQuigs]

I mean I guess Bing might get to track an aggregate of DuckDuckGo users, but that's hardly the same thing....

Fine.

[AdamJS]

Google used to be good. Really really good. In a sea of paid-priority listing search engines that returned mostly crap, and the same crap at that, they were a shining diamond.

But for quite some time, their results have been getting far worse, the search has gotten LESS flexible (and more "I know what you want to search for, NOT you, the user") and they've become that which they were supposed to be better than. That even MSN/Live/MS/Bing can return better results and actually listens to my syntax far better than Google is a travesty.

So they can take their final self-administered nail in their coffin and bugger off.

Re:EYEBALLS!

[b4dc0d3r]

Remember how they started - giving search results with a clean interface. What you were looking for, and nothing else. Their target market, when they started, was people who wanted to find what they were looking for.

Then they realized how much money they could make on advertising, and search stopped being their product. Eyeballs are now their product. That's when they switched target markets from "people who knew what they wanted" to "the lowest common denominator".

They make a web browser (Chrome), and fund a competitor (FireFox), because they want to reach the most eyeballs. Android is all about Google services and advertising. GoogleBook (sorry, Google+) is about reaching the drooling window-lickers who have to know what Snooki is wearing today, if they aren't using Android, Google Search, Chrome, Gmail, or any other Google service.