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

[DCTech]

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.

Re:Please no

[allo]

google had its SN before, orkut.

Re:Please no

[bhcompy]

Microsoft doesn't even need to do anything but stick with what they're doing at this point for Bing to grow. Google is junking up the search results, as you would say, more and more with each passing month

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

[jeffmeden]

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: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

[xaxa]

All you have to do is sign out and search.

I leave my main web browser logged in to my personal GMail, which over the last year or two has led to me being logged in on all kinds of other Google sites -- YouTube, Google search, G+. Presumably Google Analytics from anything I look at is tied to my account.

I already use a separate browser for anything "dodgy". I wonder if I should get a third browser, and use that only for Google-related things. Then I can block all cookies from anything related to Google in my main browser.

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

[DaveV1.0]

First off, it is much easier to change search engines than it is to change operating systems. No one is required to use Google Search and there are plenty of competitors. Many people haven't looked at another search engine in years simply because Google does what they want and they presume it is the best. And, of course, many slashdotters wouldn't ever consider using Bing because it is made by the evil M$.

Secondly, you assert that MapQuest is dying off because of Google integrating maps into Google Search, but you offer no evidence. My experiences with MapQuest and it's user interface were far inferior to my Google Maps experience.

Finally, no one is being forced to use any particular service of Google's and no one is forcing one to use Google's other services if one uses Google Search.

Re:Please no

[Samantha Wright]

Toooooooo laaaaaaaaaaaaate. Soon we will all live within our own socially-bounded thought bubbles, and the Internet's power to connect people will just be an abstraction layer on top of the physical world. Say goodbye to having your culture, values, and beliefs challenged. Advertising has spoken, and advertising hates having to pander to multiple audiences at the same time.

Re:Please no

[jeffmeden]

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.

That's an easy one; with MS the customer was the person sitting at the computer, and they were also tasked with deciding which browser software to use (from a range or free and for-pay packages). With Google, the only people who could be construed as customers are those purchasing ad space; if you are using the search engine you are not their customer, you are part of their *product*. Because the ad war for eyeballs stops at basically nothing, it is hard to argue they are abusing a market position in one that *doesn't exist* when really they are just providing more paths for advertisers to spend money with them. Now, argue that they are somehow unduly harming the marketplace for advertisers or ad companies, and you may have a case (as it is, Facebook has such a huge lead in the social space that this will all be irrelevant for several years.)

Re:Please no

[recoiledsnake]

>Secondly, you assert that MapQuest is dying off because of Google integrating maps into Google Search, but you offer no evidence

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/fairsearch-coalition-prepares-report-googles-alleged-anticompetitive-conduct

>My experiences with MapQuest and it's user interface were far inferior to my Google Maps experience.

Netscape was pretty inferior to IE4 as well.

>Finally, no one is being forced to use any particular service of Google's and no one is forcing one to use Google's other services if one uses Google Search.

Microsoft never prevented anyone from installing or using Netscape either.

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

[BlackSnake112]

If Google keeps on giving me crappy search results, I will be looking for a new main search site. I had to go 9-10 pages deep to find out what I was looking for the other day. The first 8 pages were all shopping ads for the laptop. I did type in laptop+issue. Tried two other search site and got issue related results on the first page. I been fining this more and more with Google. I think they get more revenue from the sales sites then the fix it sites. Which would explain the number of sales site before the fix it sites.

For me mapquest just worked. Then again I was printing off the directions. I did not use a tablet or smart phone to display those directions. I also liked the old mapquest look better then the new one.

As for as no one is being forced, the same could have been said for the antitrust case against microsoft. That didn't hold water then either.

Re:Please no

[DaveV1.0]

If the results are so crappy, why are you still using it? Have you checked with other sites to see if they give more relevant results?

Please explain how you are being forced to use any Google service.

Re:Please no

[Hognoxious]

If anything drives me mad, it's damned machines second guessing me. Over Christmas, briefly, it started doing everything in Dutch. Yes, I checked my browser preferences - it was ignoring them.

And how about gmail's new look - total train wreck (not that the old one was a paragon of ergonomics).

Re:Please no

[element-o.p.]

Microsoft didn't force you to buy Windows either...

That point is somewhat debatable. It wasn't all that long ago that it was well-night impossible to buy (as opposed to "build") a PC without Windows, unless you ponied up a lot of extra $$$ for a Mac.

Re:Please no

[DragonWriter]

A monopoly, at least for antitrust laws, means they have a completely dominant position over that market.

Which Google, with ~65% share, doesn't have with internet search.

Microsoft didn't force you to buy Windows either, but they were still fined for violating antitrust laws.

Microsoft had, IIRC, close to or above a 90% share in the desktop OS market when it was found to have (and have illegally leveraged) a monopoly in that market.

Re:Please no

[DaveV1.0]

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.

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

[Requiem18th]

I resist. Try http://duckduckgo.com/ or http://startpage.com./ It's possible.

Re:Please no

[GameboyRMH]

Duckduckgo uses Bing's results, I found that out the other day. Which surprised me because from the quality of the results, I figured DuckDuckGo was a tiny struggling project that was still working on their search code and hadn't done any major indexing.

Re:Please no

[datavirtue]

Cry me a river. Anyone can go to these other sites if they want. If Google is the best, no one cares. I use Google because all those services are integrated. There is no monopoly on search. People are confusing monopoly with everyone choosing to use Google. It cannot be a detriment if most people are choosing to visit Google.

Re:Please no

[GameboyRMH]

Both return results that are "lacking" to put it gently IMO.

Re:Please no

[LordLucless]

Totally different.

Microsoft bundled IE with Windows - if you bought windows (which a consumer pretty much had to in those days) you also got IE
With Google, if you use both Google+ and search, they work synergistically. One doesn't force you to get the other. If they required you to sign up to Google+ to use search, then you'd have a closer parallel

Re:Please no

[Hognoxious]

One thing it gets horribly wrong is how it threads things. Threading should be based on which messages are replies to which messages; they base it on having the same title. This means if you're subscribed to mailing lists etc. you can miss things because they're lumped together.

Also, it doesn't order them properly - it seems to order them based on the first message - so you can miss a reply (or a reply to a reply) because it sorts lower down (maybe on the second page) than it should.

Then there's no obvious way to expand the list of labels; the tiny "more" thing (it's not an icon, what is it?) only appears when you mouse over the partial list. There's no way to set which labels have priority. I could go on.

I'm beginning to think that google design shit GUIs either to be bastards or as part of some bizarre psychological experiment, because a monkey tossing a coin would get it right more often than they do.

Have you ever used google groups? DejaNews had a crappy interface and they managed to make it worse. Flids.

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?!?

Re:Please no

[Lundse]

Google just doesn't understand why people want to use social networking sites and what people want.

Google is not out to give you what you want. They are out to change what you want. They might fail with you, but you are not their entire user segment. They are going to make search social. Have people log in, in order to use their hugely popular services (gmail, maps, etc.), then add all our usage data to their search servers, enabling better, and more importantly, new areas of search.

They may be a late comer to the SN business, but they are not out to "compete too late" (that would be Microsoft's business plan). They are out to change, not just social networking, but the web.

Terminator Reference

[MightyYar]

I'm pretty sure that Google is Skynet, but instead of nuking us it will just embarrass us all to death once it achieve sentience.

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

[AmbushBug]

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.

Good thing they put a toggle right there in the upper right corner that will remove all the personalized stuff from your search results! You can even have it default to off in your settings!

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.

YESSSSS!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I AM SO EXCITED! LOL! I HAVE BEEN WAITING 4 THIS DAY FOR LIKE 4EVER! I CAN'T WAIT TO TELL MY BFFS THAT THEY CAN SEARCH AND B ON SOSHUL NETWORK TOO. I CN GT LADY GAGA & SNOOKI UPDATES.

NOW IF I CN JUST GET MY AOL MAIL THEIR 2, IT WULD BE SOOOOOOOOO COOL

Re:YESSSSS!!!!

[ifrag]

At least now we know who their target market is.

Re:YESSSSS!!!!

[tftp]

At least now we know who their target market is.

It was always their target market. Do you think Google expected RMS and geeks like him to jump into social networking? How smart must be the user who wants to spend years of their life sending pointless "updates" and receiving the same from other people?

Now with fewer hits...

[Holammer]

You don't agree with!

Why search?

[moorhens]

Is it me, or am I the only person who searches for things *they don't already know?* As personalisation increases, our very idea of relevance becomes more limited. If I search for music and this new-fangled searchy thing is going to throw me stuff that I already like, how am I ever going to get the chance of liking anything radically different? Oh, I know. How about by not using Google+

Re:Why search?

[allo]

yeah. most of the other people google for "facebook.com" and "weather today".

Improve results

[DarkOx]

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:Improve results

[DaveV1.0]

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.

And, if your friend Joe used Steve's Plumbing and posted about it, Joe's post will show up in your results. The same goes for everything else you have mentioned.

Re:Improve results

[Baloroth]

I've seen many people claim this. What, exactly, are you searching for that it doesn't come up quickly? 90% of the things I search for are answered in the first 3-4 links. The only time I even have to go to the second page is if it is an obscure and/or very specific piece of information that I'm looking for. Facts are usually answered directly by Google even before the first link. Out of curiosity I did a quick comparison of searches for two facts (release date of The Darkness 2, one of the first things to spring to mind) by searching them on Google and Bing. Google knew the answer without my even visiting a link and told me what websites had the information. Bing didn't. I'd say that is pretty much a win.

For fun, I also did an Altavista search. Google is considerably better IMO.

Re:Improve results

[0123456]

I've seen many people claim this. What, exactly, are you searching for that it doesn't come up quickly?

Generally speaking, any kind of specialist information. Rather than give me the dozen results on the web that are actually useful, Google will convert the actual words I typed in into different words because it's sure I didn't mean to search for what I actually asked it to search for, and then spew out ten million results with the dozen useful results hidden among them.

The 'smarter' Google make their search, the worse the results become because the 'smarts' are all aimed at the lowest common denominator who can't remember the URL for Facebook.

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.

Re:Good job, Google

[icebraining]

Or you can just click the button they offer that disables the G+ personalization.

Re:Good job, Google

[AmbushBug]

And you can even default it to off in your settings! Amazing!

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.

Deleted it

[Dwedit]

And now I've deleted my unused Google+ account.

what about when I search for porn?

[larry bagina]

Will it show my friends dick pics? :(

Re:what about when I search for porn?

[SpinyNorman]

No - it'll show the porn your friends and family like.

Imagine goatse with a google annotation "your dad liked this".

Or worse.

Re:Desperation?

[DragonWriter]

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

Google has been up front from the beginning that the long-term plan for Google+ (and the reason for the name) was that it was going to be an integrated social layer that interacted deeply with the rest of Google's services, not a separate standalone service.

Google likes to answer the question

[jack the ex-cynic]

"What if we could" instead of "Why would they want it". Sometimes it works out really great. I don't think this will be one of those times.

Re:"Real names" policy still in play?

[vlm]

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?

[Animats]

We're releasing a Google ad blocker, 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.)

Putting on blinder

[IcyHando'Death]

I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea of Google narrowing my world view for me, but I suppose this is just an incremental step down a path we set out on long ago. Remember when "Site of the Day" was everybody's favorite spot on the web?

Re:Putting on blinder

[DragonWriter]

I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea of Google narrowing my world view for me

Then turn it off. You can do that.

but I suppose this is just an incremental step down a path we set out on long ago.

The more there is on the internet, the more tools are needed to narrow down to get what you want, separating the (subjective) wheat from the chaff. In many cases, I suspect that incorporating social graph information will enable mechanisms to improve search quality.

Use DuckDuckGo instead

[gQuigs]

I've pretty much switched to http://duckduckgo.com/

Check out http://dontbubble.us/ and http://donttrack.us/. This would be an example of bubbling, btw.

And if you don't find results (I'd say Google has better results about 20-30% of the time) !g brings that search term to Google.

Re:Use DuckDuckGo instead

[geek]

Yes but The Duck uses Bing which tracks you just the same as Google.

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....

Contrarian View I Suppose

[CatsCradle]

Really? Can you describe what is it about Google's current search that you find so pristine that you've bought into the idea that all and any change == bad? Was it that way last month or last year because Google changes their search all the time ...

Google's self declared mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" So much of our lives and a great portion of worlds information is now happening on social networks. Of course that data should be made accessible and useful and the ability not to use it will be a power feature for those that need or want it just like they do everything else.

HOWTO: Remove G+ without losing Gmail

[bornagainpenguin]

I have just closed my G+ account due to this latest announcement. I'm tired of Google crapping up my search results and changing the layouts to darn near everything on me. This was the last straw.

This guy has a tutorial on how you can safely remove your G+ account without losing your Gmail account or Picasa pictures. After you go through the process Google asks why you are leaving--I recommend everyone drop them a link to this article so they know exactly why we're fed up. Maybe it will open some eyes?

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.

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:Uhg

[fulldecent]

Well good luck finding anything

I'm not worried about MY search results...

[tomzyk]

... I'm actually worried about OTHER people's search results. People who don't know any better than to go look for information outside of their social circles.

If I search for "origin of species", I'll see references to Charles Darwin.
If students in Kansas look it up, they'll probably see all kinds of links to creationism and how evolution is wrong/evil.

(and no, i don't mean to start a flamewar with that. it's just the first example that popped into my head where different social circles could see completely different results.)

This personalization of search results is gonna make http://lmgtfy.com/ obsolete too. And that makes me a saaaaad panda.

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.