Google Merges Google+ Into Search

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @05:12AM from the relating-to-related-links dept.

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.

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Re:Please no by DCTech · 2012-01-10 05:59 · Score: 1, Troll

The antitrust issues rarely are from direct user point of view. It wasn't with Microsoft, it isn't with Google. With Microsoft they were trying to kill other browser and OS makers by making deals with PC manufacturers. With Google it's issue with advertisers, who are the actual customers of Google. Since Google maintains a monopoly on search, they can pretty much dictate pay per click advertising. And they do.
European Union was looking into Google's monopoly issues because Google was denying advertisers from running same ads on other networks if they want to use Google's ad services. This is already bad in US, but in several European countries Google has a market share of 90-99% in search. There are just no alternatives, and if there are, Google is doing everything they can to kill them off. Hence the antitrust issues.