Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Comes Out Swinging Against Google's Personalized Search
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."
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.
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.
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,
Pop quiz!
Q: What does America, Europe and Scandinavia have in common?
A: They aren't countries.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.