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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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!

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

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.

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: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.

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.

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.)

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

[gQuigs]

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

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: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.