Griping over Google
February 16, 2012
We’ve found yet more commentary on Google’s attempt to meld social with search. Search Engine Watch explores “How Google+ Could Threaten Google’s Core Search Business.”
Google has incorporated information from users’ Google+ network into Google Search results. Writer Nathan Safran observes that most criticism has centered on potential antitrust issues around weaving their own social networking product into the world’s largest Web search engine. However, he would like to focus on a more basic question:
Are searchers, in fact, better off for having personalized results in their search results? As [Slate’s] Manjoo states, the reason we turn to a search engine is to get the collective view of all Web users, and that has worked particularly well until now. . . . The question becomes even more significant when we consider that search is a zero-sum game: whatever personalized results Google is showing me is taking real estate away from the collective view of all web users I am after.
We may (or may not) love our social network “friends”, but we don’t necessarily trust their judgment. Thinking that users would want to see these personalized choices before those of experts in any given field seems to me a symptom of Trend Overload; the company is so enamored with the boom in social networking that it went just a little too far.
Safran wonders whether this choice might be Google’s downfall; he notes that it is different from the company’s other failures because it directly affects the quality of Search, its main source of revenue by far. Personally, though I agree that this was a foolish move, I’m sure the GOOG is strong enough to recover.
Cynthia Murrell, February 16, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
