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Twitter Comes Out Swinging Against Google's Personalized Search

Posted by Soulskill on from the social-networking-drama dept.

Meshach writes "Google's release of the new 'Search Plus Your World' feature has elicited harsh words from Twitter's general counsel (who used to work with Google). He claims that the changes will make information harder to find for users and be bad news for news publishers. Some analysts are wondering if this is a prelude to a legal battle similar to Microsoft's bundling of IE."

52 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. I've been waiting for personalized search forever! by bit+trollent · · Score: 2

    I've never wanted to use Twitter.

  2. I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by bogaboga · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From the linked article:

    I'm not saying that the Justice Department should look into this. I' m just saying that I think they will. I' m far from an expert on this, but I think anyone should be able to see how this is a very slippery slope for Google.

    Where exactly is the [potential] problem? I hope someone can elucidate.

    1. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by bs0d3 · · Score: 4, Informative

      twitter sells the right to mine their data, google stopped paying so twitter locked them out. twitter still does business with bing, bing also has a deal with facebook. google is allowing themselves to their own data and also bing sucks

    2. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by EdIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think it is possible to elucidate. Had to read the article because I was so confused.

      Twitter:

      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.

      Google:

      We are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.

      Article:

      The new Google service, which is rolling out today, lets search users toggle between personalized and "global" results, with the former including information gleaned from its Google+ social network and its Picasa image-storage service. Twitter reasonably enough sees that move as a threat, since it could well encourage people to share breaking news on Google+ rather than Twitter.

      Ummmm. Huh?

      So.... Google is rolling out a service that you have to opt in for that will personalize search results according to data they collected on you.

      Twitter has already told Google not to index its tweets apparently. Twitter feels that news comes from them first somehow. I can see that being the case in some tumultuous countries, but as a generality? Come on. That's pushing it. Relevant? Really? What about the signal to noise ratio? Verification?

      News publishers might be affected by personalization, but only in so far as their articles that get included would have to match the user profile. Anything else just gets weighted down in the rankings.

      Saying the Justice Department should look into this sounds like Whiny Bitch syndrome coupled with some form of cognitive dissonance.

      If Google is guilty of anything with the personalized search results, which would be less guilty in my mind, they should already be guilty just by doing what they are doing now without personalized results. Their own algorithms should make them guilty by that logic.

      Sounds like Twitter feels intimidated by Google+ and is talking out of its ass.

    3. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by Dahamma · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's actually pretty irrelevant anyway - Twitter has never had a business model. They just have no clue how to make money.

      The only reason they are bitching is that they are worried investors will figure this out before they IPO and the employees cash out before they go down the drain...

    4. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by Lillebo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You have lots of 1s in your ID number.

    5. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by MrDoh! · · Score: 2

      Mis-typed perhaps, but I understand it to be that Google's looking after their own data. They've got their own social network, and are, obviously, pushing that first!

      "hey, should we search our own data?" "hmm... lemme think about that for a second.... yeah, go on then"
      Twitter broke away, now moans that google's not paying them/using their data? sheesh.

      --
      Waiting for an amusing sig.
    6. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by tuppe666 · · Score: 2

      It's actually pretty irrelevant anyway - Twitter has never had a business model. They just have no clue how to make money.

      The only reason they are bitching is that they are worried investors will figure this out before they IPO and the employees cash out before they go down the drain...

      Google used to give them money to access their data. Microsoft give them money $30 million a year for their data now. Thats not chump change.

    7. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by justforgetme · · Score: 2

      It means that google is basing it's data from G+ it's own social network now. In fact google is kind of trying to lock all other social networks out lately. Not in some unfair way but I have to admit that I see google+ much more often on google related pages than on the free internet.

      Example: google analytics shows social data from G+ for your sites now but I have no idea if there is a way to include social data from Facebook or Twitter aswell. Google search results give you options for G+ sharing but not for the other networks. Now this, that google is going to integrate your
      G+ interactions into your search results

      Google have understood that social is kind of the web3.0 and is trying really hard to become the dominant entity in social interactions
      and this article is just a small part of the bigger picture.

      IMO they are doing it wrong. To stay dominant in search - and let's face it that is where you go when your friends fail you - they should embrace the social Internet as a whole, not try to wall it into their own little piconet.

      --
      -- no sig today
    8. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by lennier1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.

      That's the part I don't quite get. Google respects their nofollow instructions and that's supposed to make them the bad guys???

      Seems more like they're bitching because they no longer receive money from Google on top of them sending visitors their way

    9. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by rtfa-troll · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Kind of an anti trust issue here...

      Why? People keep saying this, but I really don't see the key things that are needed for Google to have real Anti trust issues.

      A) I haven't seen any evidence that Google's monopoly is illegally acquired. People keep forgetting this, when they compare Google with Microsoft. Microsoft is a fundamentally immoral organisation. They acquired their monopoly by using illegal tactics to block other competitors (to understand the basics, have a look at Judge Jackson's findings of facts). Many of the restrictions which should be imposed on Microsoft come not simply because they have a monopoly, but because they broke the law to get that monopoly. If it were anyone but Microsoft people would say "if you can't take the time then don't do the crime"; because it's Microsoft and they are rich somehow a whole bunch of apologists appear acting as if they did nothing wrong.

      B) Google is easily substitutable; it's not like a computer where you need to pay money or even an operating system where you need to know how to reinstall. You just go to a different web page, or you even just type "Bing" into Google. There is only one thing which keeps people on Google's results rather than Bings. It's not even the quality as such, which, IMHO has been going downhill since they stopped treating keywords as having to be in the page. The thing is that people trust Google not to trick them. The results are honest and clear. This is Google's biggest competitive advantage, and if it turns out that Google is wrongly ignoring twitter, that will be an opening for another search engine that is more honest. Fortunately for Google, their competitor at present is Microsoft which is congenitally incapable of honesty. The stupidity of a company which gets caught copying it's results from Google and doctoring results in favour of it's own products in the first few months after launching a new search engine is astounding.

      So; what is a search engine? A system which gives an opinion about which pages they would like to recommend based on your query string. If Google's opinion is that you are better with their data than Twitters that's fine for them to say. More importantly; if Google doesn't want to pay for access to Twitter's data. Or any other bunch of factors at Google's discretion then that is Google's decision. In order to change that you would need real evidence that Google broke the law in ways which greatly benefitted their search engine "monopoly".

      --
      =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
    10. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by physburn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "twitter sells the right to mine their data". And good luck to that, mine 140 character all this codes bit.ly that change and TLAs three letter aconyms, can I now data mine 1/f noise and white noise. Don't want google sell mining rights on my searches though. And I want friends and my web search history, very well seperated.

    11. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by ajo_arctus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm not sure it matters how you get the monopoly -- I think the problems start if you abuse the power once you have it. Google will have to be really careful (but they know that, and I'm sure they are doing all they can to play fair), but if they use their dominance in search to (artificially) dominate other markets, it's kind of what Microsoft did with IE and it got them in to trouble. Of course, Microsoft also used some very dirty, very immoral tactics time and time again, so it's hard to compare them with Google.

    12. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      - GOOGLE, DON'T FUCKING INDEX US!
      - OK, we won't.
      *time passes*
      - GOOGLE, WHERE THE FUCK IS MY TRAFFIC?

      It's not like this is first time it happens.

    13. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by StripedCow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The problem lies not just with the monopolist, but with the way the economy works. It allows for only a handful of influential companies in any market segment (including web-search, electronics, etc.) We expect those companies to behave well (following human ethical rules), but we forget that they have to live up to the shareholders' expectations, and thus are greedy by design.

      A) Like someone else said, it does not matter HOW a company gets into a monopoly, but more how it behaves once it acquired its dominant position. How we can expect it to behave in the future is not even important because things may radically change with the change of a board.
      Bundling of products is anti-competitive, and should not be accepted from either MS or Google. Example: assume you are a game developer, and Google suddenly starts promoting a game that is very much like your game on their homepage (bundling), and starts giving it away for free (dumping), then you are basically out of business.

      B) Monopolists or near-monopolists are not easily replaceable, almost by definition. Further, you make it seem like companies can compete in "honesty". Well, unfortunately, that is just not how the market works. In fact, perhaps a more realistic view is that companies compete in "deception". Google is an advertisement company, and thus may be considered masters in this art.

      What we need is ways to break up large companies into smaller ones. Ways to commoditize their products. Like many programmers know, it makes more sense to build a system out of small modules which are open and easy to replace, than to build a large monolithic closed-source system. This is where economists and lawmakers can actually learn something from programmers.

      --
      If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    14. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IMO they are doing it wrong. To stay dominant in search - and let's face it that is where you go when your friends fail you - they should embrace the social Internet as a whole, not try to wall it into their own little piconet.

      This seems to me to be a misunderstanding. Google will index anything they can get their hands on. They aren't indexing Twitter because Twitter told them not to. They can't index parts of Facebook that are relevant to me (ie stuff that I can see because my friends have told Facebook to share it with their friends) because they don't have access to that information (and Facebook have no real right to give it to them).

      The only way Google can get their hands on non-public data shared between friends is if they are the provider those friends have chosen broker that information.

      --
      Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    15. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by Raenex · · Score: 2

      Google will have to be really careful (but they know that, and I'm sure they are doing all they can to play fair),

      No, they aren't. Examples below.

      but if they use their dominance in search to (artificially) dominate other markets, it's kind of what Microsoft did with IE and it got them in to trouble.

      Like how they display a big fat ad to install Chrome when I visit their home page with IE? Or how they used Android to get themselves on mobile? Or how they aggressively scanned copyrighted books without payment, and then tried to get an exclusive deal to do this in a court settlement? Or how they keep on buying Internet companies like YouTube, which serve content, but Google originally claimed they were just going to be a search company?

      I think it's pretty obvious they are empire building.

    16. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by delinear · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's common because there's a perception that if my site is generating content, Google should pay me for that content, but if Google is sending traffic my way, well they should do that for free (they've already had the chance to advertise to those people after all). It's a blatant double standard, but the sooner community driven sites recognise that the community is their only asset and anything they can do to feed into that is valuable to them, the sooner these stupid squabbles will end.

    17. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 2

      Like how they display a big fat ad to install Chrome when I visit their home page with IE?

      To be fair, MS shows me a big ad for IE when I visit their site with a non-IE browser. They even offer me a newer version of IE if I'm not using the latest one.

      Or how they used Android to get themselves on mobile?

      MS installs Bing as the default search engine for IE. Hell, MS even allows MS sites to be accessed from a PC behind ISA server even if the proxy settings aren't set (but only MS sites).

      Every company tries to leverage their strengths into more market share. MS allows their users to install other browsers or search providers rather than using IE and/or Bing (both of which are free). Google doesn't require Chrome or Google+ (both of which are free) to be able to use their free search engine. Every company tries to take advantage of every set of eyes that visit their pages or use their products.

    18. Re:I don't see the problem at all! Am I just dumb? by coolmadsi · · Score: 2

      The real issue is if they are prioritizing thier data ahead of thier competitors...that would lead to more clicks to thier own pages which is more ad revenue. Kind of an anti trust issue here...

      In the case of twitter, they had been asked to not use their (twitters) data, so are not using it (and therefore would be unable to involve it in some kind of prioritizing list). From Google:

      We are a bit surprised by Twitter's comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.
      https://plus.google.com/116899029375914044550/posts/24uqWqvALud

  3. I'm a boiled frog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These stories made me realise just how crappy google has become; the poor quality search results and unresponsive Javascript interface.

    In the market for a new search engine.

    1. Re:I'm a boiled frog by fred911 · · Score: 3, Funny

      That be Google Classic Beta.:)

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  4. people block google; google integrates own service by unrtst · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm all for the big brother fear posts about Google getting evil, but this isn't the time. Twitter ended their agreement with Google for a real time feed; other realtime/news sites have been threatening blocking Google; then they get upset when Google says fuck it, introduces their own service, and integrates it.

    What's next? NYT blocks Google indexers and then complains when they don't show up in the top of the search results?

    The social sites have had users data locked up long enough. It's due time they provide API's to users, aggregators, and others. Google seems to want to include as much of this other stuff as it can in its search results... they're not the bottleneck, nor the slippery slope here.

  5. Buggy whip makers.. by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Also complained that that new fangled automobile would cause various societal ills. In reality, they were just pissed off that they were being obsoleted.

    1. Re:Buggy whip makers.. by Threni · · Score: 2

      Exactly. I'm surprised Twitter was up long enough for the message to be posted.

  6. Twit Fail by kodiaktau · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a distraction to get media focus back on Twitter because of the Google search plus announcement. Honestly Twitter shows me the Fail Whale about once a week and their service record is poor for such a large site - so what will they be complaining about next?

    Google has been amassing tons of data and is now planning to use that to have personalized search - that is the story. I don't see how they will get around the filter bubble issue. (Never mind personal data protection and other issues.)

    As a side I am still trying to wrap my head around Wolfram's blog today about using a TLD .data in relation to the Google announcement.

    Bad day for the internet?

    I am surprised it didn't hit Twitfail

  7. Google is becoming annoying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My problem with Google is that it's never really possible to opt out of their options: for some reason they can't stick to their effing cookies!

    I've recently had a lot of trouble with Google Instant and autocompletion: these are features I do *not* want, and yet, it doesn't matter how many times I deactivate them in the search settings, there's always some caveat where it can turn back on - "google instant will be reactivated if you blink the left eye while typing with your left finger on any google page" (or will be reactivated on all incoming searches from Chrome).

    Very often, the only solution is to manually game the search parameters: figure what (if anything) can turn all these extraneous additions off, and then turn them off. I'm pretty sure I'm going to face the same annoyance with this: I already see the switch "show personal results"/"hide personal results", and I'm sort of definite about the fact that no matter how I set it, it will tend to get switched back to "show personal results".

    (BTW, since I've started ranting, I might add this unrelated tidbit: how many times do I have to "revert to the old look" in Gmail for them to understand that I *can't* stand their new look for Gmail, and will hold out until the VERY END???!

    1. Re:Google is becoming annoying by physburn · · Score: 2

      I concur, just had google+ add my friends pop up in the middle of using google groups, with no close button. Give me back usenet.

  8. Swinging? More like whining! by Dahamma · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Coming out "swinging" would have been more like "that's nothing, we have an answer to this that you will like even more!". This is more like a kid in the playground saying "no fair, I wasn't ready, do over!"

  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. I am totally perplexed by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    What has Google's offer of "'Search Plus Your World" got to do with Microsoft's bundling of IE ?

    Can someone educate me, please ??

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:I am totally perplexed by crutchy · · Score: 5, Informative

      bundling of personalized search into a conventional search engine could be construed as anti-competitive in the personalized search market.

      twitter and facebook would probably consider themselves players in the personalized search market, so the assumption is that they may challenge google for monopolizing personal search that users might otherwise currently use twitter and facebook for.

      i don't see the point in telling people how many bits of toast i'm making for breakfast on twatter, facecrap is a crock of shit for obvious reasons, and spoogel results are getting less relevant with each passing day. i can only hope they all implode into each other in an epic court battle.

  11. Excuse me, but you just don't make sense ! by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 2

    To use the service, people have to OPT IN --- which means, they have to

    CONSCIOUSLY MAKE THE DECISION,

    KEY IN THE CORRECT INFO AND

    CLICK THE RIGHT BUTTON,

    before they are allowed to use the service.

    All Google does - and I am not employed by Google or any of its associates - in this case, is to offer a service.

    To say that Google is "evil" in this case is like saying the late Mother Teresa did what she did for the sake of publicity.

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:Excuse me, but you just don't make sense ! by martin-boundary · · Score: 2

      That's why I use a text browser for google searches (via surfraw). The damn google javascript nonsense always fucks up trying to search for jjjjjjj and kkkkkkkkkk as soon as I start scrolling...

    2. Re:Excuse me, but you just don't make sense ! by JAlexoi · · Score: 2

      To say that Google is "evil" in this case is like saying the late Mother Teresa did what she did for the sake of publicity.

      Well.... Then Google is definitely evil.

  12. Re:Google search is useless by Issarlk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember (not fondly) the time when entering *anything* into a search engine yielded pages of "Sexy nude girls" results. I don't miss that "unbroken" internet at all.

  13. I can see a problem with personalised search.. by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I can see a problem with personalised search, but not the one that Twitter mentions. It may polarise opinions. Take two people, one leaning slightly towards centre-right wing politics and the other centre-left. These people might have different opinions on some things, but not much.

    The one leaning slightly right will see more and more search results showing that low tax is good, social provision bad, Obama wanting to make America a country like Europe or Scandinavia. This may move their opinion to the right slightly, so they will click on further right wing sites where they will start to see stories about "death panels" in Europe, global warming being fictitious and Obama wanting to make America a Muslim country, etc.

    The one with centre-left tendencies will see stories about corporations putting out false information on global warming, how European countries have higher levels of health at a lower cost, etc. but hardly any right-wing rebuttals. He may move slightly further left, and then see searches saying that democracy doesn't work because all parties are the same, how republicans want non-Christians barred from official positions (without the context that it is one or two extremists), and so on

    You end up with two centre-moderates moving to opposite extremes.

    1. Re:I can see a problem with personalised search.. by Ash-Fox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Obama wanting to make America a country like Europe or Scandinavia.

      Pop quiz!

      Q: What does America, Europe and Scandinavia have in common?

      A: They aren't countries.

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  14. Re:Google search is useless by rtfa-troll · · Score: 2

    Excellent reason to move on to engines like DuckDuckGo (http://ddg.gg)...

    I have DDG set as a default on some computers. I really like the privacy. The first few results are very often useful and interesting; especially the nice way the structure different results so you know which are official sites etc. This really shows there is space for and a need for a new search engine competitor. The fact is though that if it's something where you have to look a little further (e.g. a local business with a somewhat common name) it just doesn't cope. If you know that you can also feed through to Google (with a !g .. or images/news etc. with !i/!n etc.) then that lets you stick with it more easily. In the end, however, the main thing DDG does is remind me exactly how good Google is. I really hope they can come up with a new / better search engine which delivers results which are overall as good as Googles.

    Anyone have suggestions for improving DDG's default results?

    P.S. Please make links clickable when posting;

    --
    =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
  15. Personalized search just doesn't work! by q.kontinuum · · Score: 2

    Well, it worked for some time, but lately even when looking for some completely innocent words, like e.g. "frog" I tend to get only kinky results. (Don't ask, you don't want to see...) I could not remotely guess how this should in any way reflect my personal interest. (And I did delete my browser history in forehand, also I by no means did not look at any kinky stuff, off course.)

    --
    Trolling is a art!
    1. Re:Personalized search just doesn't work! by cc1984_ · · Score: 4, Funny

      [Personalized search just doesn't work!] Well, it worked for some time, but lately even when looking for some completely innocent words, like e.g. "frog" I tend to get only kinky results.

      I'd recommend pron browsing mode to bypass Google picking up your kinky preferences for your personalized search!

  16. Re:I've been waiting for personalized search forev by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    yes, exactly, and this looks more like Twitter being scared of competition to me

  17. Re:I've been waiting for personalized search forev by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you have a google account, you already have personalized search.

    That's why I always make sure I'm not logged into Google when searching. Frankly speaking, 'personalized search' is not a very good idea. It has the potential to boost your cognitive biases until you have a completely distorted view of reality. Hopefully not too many people fall into this trap.

  18. Search and Social Network Bubbling by improfane · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is an interesting TED talk about this: http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk

    Duck Duck Go made this website to reaise awareness of bubbling: http://dontbubble.us/

    --
    Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
    1. Re:Search and Social Network Bubbling by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 4, Informative

      So "disable" it ... In chrome : ctrl-shift-n + start typing your google search.

      done/done

  19. Most of the times it's very useful, IMHO by YA_Python_dev · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not everyone searches "who is better republicans or democrats" on Google. :-) (BTW, the first result for me suggests that the "Democrats are better for the economy").

    When I search for "cookies" I very much appreciate that the first result is the Wikipedia page for HTTP cookies and the second one is the documentation for the cookielib module in the Python standard library. Both are very relevant results for me.

    My grandmother, on the other hand, is probably happier to get a website with recipes.

    People in the US searching for "United" probably want an airline website, in the UK some people might be more interested in a soccer team.

    Disclaimer: I speak only for myself and not anyone else. IANARE.

    --
    There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
    1. Re:Most of the times it's very useful, IMHO by taiwanjohn · · Score: 2

      Useful sometimes, but not others. I'd much rather have it as an optional feature. I'm just wondering if there's any way to "turn it off" without the hassle of logging out.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
    2. Re:Most of the times it's very useful, IMHO by AlexanderZ · · Score: 2

      Verbatim search at the bottom of the left sidebar. http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p=g_verb&answer=1734130

  20. Re:I've been waiting for personalized search forev by diegocg · · Score: 3, Informative

    You can disable the indexing of your web history, effectively disabling "personalized search" at the same time.

  21. Re:I've been waiting for personalized search forev by jdgeorge · · Score: 3, Informative

    If I recall correctly, Google no longer provides search of Twitter posts due to Twitter's deal to support Google's real-time search expired (presumably because Google didn't want to pay as much as Twitter wanted.)

    Apparently, Google currently can't index Twitter's own real-time activity due to lack of an agreement, and now Twitter is incensed that Google has the audacity to index Google's own real-time activity. Outrageous!

  22. Re:I've been waiting for personalized search forev by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 2

    You can disable the indexing of your web history, effectively disabling "personalized search" at the same time.

    Is it really disabled, or do they just stop showing it to you?

  23. I'll trust Google by nilbog · · Score: 2

    I'll trust Google to figure out how to make information easier to find. That's their job and so far they've been pretty damn good at it. Twitter sucks at search.

    --
    or else!