In Wired’s With Search+, Google Fires Another Shot at Facebook, the author unwittingly summarizes the reason for the play.
The desire to displace Facebook leaves Google scrambling for plays that will allow them to become the “social” space and drive the growth of their business. Those in the know understand that their business is not search.
Thus I find inaccuracy in the following statement by the author:
Launched Tuesday, Google’s new Search+ initiative integrates results culled from your Google+ social network connections into Google search queries, a major step into providing relevant social content into the company’s namesake product.
Doing a search for myself this morning, I find that the relevant information that I would desire was driven down the page of results by “social” results. As an information professional I see this latest play by Google as an indication that relevance for the average user is now being defined by Google Search, not relevant information.
So Google+, social search, and Google are making great strides to promote their business but the notion that these results are relevant are laughable to a serious seeker of information. I shall laugh my way to more effective search engines such as Yandex, duckduckgo and even Bing.
Constance Ard, January 12, 2012
