Google Reveals New Social Search Feature, Twitter Not Happy About It


 Christo [PCD]    13 Jan : 12:35
 None    Internet

After Google announced Search plus Your World yesterday, Twitter responded negatively

After Google announced Search plus Your World yesterday, Twitter responded negatively

Google announced a new addition to its Search service this week called "Search plus Your World," which brings a social aspect to the table. But social giant Twitter has made it clear that Google's latest release is stepping on its toes, and could likely take away some of Twitter's spotlight.

Search plus Your World is Google's most recent effort to apply a social touch to its search engine. The new tool will allow users to not only search the Web for public webpages as they normally would via Google, but also search their own pages and content as well as family and friends' pages and content. The whole idea mainly centers around Google+ pages and Picasa images on the Web, probably in an effort to attract more Google+ members.

Google is achieving this through three new features, including Personal Results, which allows the user to find information like Google+ photos and posts that include them or were created by them; Profiles in Search, which allows a user to find people they know, and People and Pages, which helps users find people they may not know yet, but may want to based on similar interests.

Google gives users the option to add Search plus Your World to normal search just by clicking a toggle button under the Search bar. Just click the icon of a person to see personal results. If you'd prefer to see public pages like usual only, there's an icon of a globe right next to the social icon that will remove results pertaining to you or people you know personally.


Google also assures that the privacy settings are easy to use for those who do not want certain things to show up in Search. Posts and photos can be marked with settings that will only be visible to the user, limited people or the public.

Google is rolling out the new feature over the next few days, and some are not very happy about it (cough TWITTER cough).

After Google announced Search plus Your World yesterday, Twitter responded negatively with both a formal statement and a Twitter post from company general counsel and former Google employee Alex Macgillivray.

"Bad day for the Internet," tweeted Macgillivray. "Having been there, I can imagine the dissention @google to search being warped this way."

Twitter later released the following statement in regards to Google's Search plus Your World:

For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

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.

We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that's bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

Google responded to Twitter via a Google+ post, saying it wasn't sure what Twitter's beef was considering Twitter chose not to renew it's two-year-old deal with Google to display real-time tweets last July, which likely decreased Twitter visibility.

However, many are now wondering if Google will attract attention from the Justice Department because of this new move.

Sources: The Official Google Blog, CNET


[Submitted by Christo [PCD]]

1 1326450206 Google

Click to discuss this news item in the forums




News Categories