Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Google, Social Networking | 3 Comments

What’s the big deal about Google’s search plus your world?

For the first time since they pulled out of China, Google really got down and dirty yesterday with the launch of Search plus your world.  SPYW (or Search+ as I’ve started referring to it as) is Google’s way of driving new users to their ailing social media site Google+ in a desperate attempt to usurp Facebook’s mantle.  The concept is really rather simple.  Rather that feeding you results based on the open web, Google are including results from your contacts on Google+ (only when you’re logged in mind).  This is optional at present (but it’s pretty much a sure thing that the default will be ‘on’) and will result in a search for ‘Bali’ (for example) bringing up friend’s pictures of their holiday in Bali, status updates mentioning Bali and such like.  Within minutes of Google going live with search+ in the US the blogs lit up (you can see my own to and fro’ing in the comments section of http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8643-google-adds-social-content-from-google-into-search-results) as assorted techie types cried foul.  But why is this?  In short: