Perusing my feeds today, I saw this post from Google’s blog:
In the post, Google extols the virtues of incorporating results such as “your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of webpages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.”
OH MY GOD! thinks I. GOOGLE IS FINALLY WORKING WITH FACEBOOK!
Nah, just kidding. What’s really going on is that Google is fully incorporating Google+ into its index. It’s as if Facebook doesn’t exist.
Now, I’ve been on this one before, and I’m sure others will point it out, or simply roll their eyes and call it a dead issue. Dead because we all know that Google hasn’t made peace with Facebook, and therefore is not crawling Facebook data, nor integrating Facebook results into its core search product in any other way than what’s absolutely necessary (ie those lame public Facebook profile pages). Facebook, in turn, has not made most of what happens inside Facebook available to search engines. It’s a standoff, because neither company really knows how to value the other company’s partnership.
And it sucks for the web. The unwillingness of Facebook and Google to share a public commons when it comes to the intersection of search and social is corrosive to the connective tissue of our shared culture. But as with all things Internet, we’ll just identify the damage and route around it. It’s just too bad we have to do that, and in the long run, it’s bad for Facebook, bad for Google, and bad for all of us. (BTW, Google also doesn’t show Twitter or Flickr results either, or any other “social” service. Just its own, Google+ and Picasa.)
Google addresses this issue in a SEL piece today: “Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service,” (said Google exec Amit) Singhal. “Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”
Er, something tells me hell will freeze over first. Google’s already failed to get a data deal done with both Twitter and Facebook. I doubt they’ll take another run at it soon, though I wish they would.
Instead, we have the deepening trend of each of the Internet Big Five trying to be All Things to All People, creating a World That If Only You’d Use Exclusively, You’d Never Have To Leave.
Ick. Remember when Google used to be a neutral player that crawled the Whole Dern Web? So sad to see that era pass. It’s not Google’s fault, entirely, but it’s sad nonetheless.
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NB: I should add that I am fully aware that the integration of G+, and *only* G+, into Google’s search service is a major win for Google’s fledgling social service. I’d expect a big bump in usage due to this, if the integration is done well (ie, doesn’t irritate users). It’s clearly “tying” in the sense of what Microsoft got slapped for in its DOJ antitrust case in the late 90s, but the context is different – Google doesn’t have a clear monopoly in search, just a pretty darn big one. If Microsoft really wanted to mess with Google, it could shut down Bing. Then Google might have some problems on its hands. Stranger things….
Well if T and FB would open up, G wouldn’t need to make this move.
Point taken. But neither can just allow anyone to digest their full feed at real time speeds. It’s expensive to service and does have value, which is what no one can seem to agree upon.
So, Google should politely wait on the sidelines until the “content sources” come around to support their desires? Pfft. Google did what any aggressive company with a competitive backbone did, it refused to be held hostage.
They didn’t exclude anyone, everyone excluded themselves.
Not saying there isn’t a threat of antitrust, but the alternative of being timid in execution of their own long-stated intentions in personalized search and integration of social had to be totally unpalatable.
I get your point Perry, I think the devil is in the details of negotiations that have now passed ….
I agree with the devil most likely being in the details; certainly there must exist potential for a mutually beneficial relationship.
It’s all about risk. I’m writing a post about it now.
This feels like just another move in a complex high stakes game. It had to happen, I think. Nobody knows how relative value equation will shake out. Surely there is “a formula” to be worked out.
Best way to realign the match is to demonstrate your power. Google exercised its muscle, and reset the dialog.
What remains annoying to me is that it’s not “Twitter’s content” or “Facebook’s content” Google is after, it’s ours.
Good point Perry. Part of what I conclude in the next post I’ve written, see the top of the site!
It’s all about risk. I’m writing a post about it now.
I agree. If others wall their eco-system to try to keep web users locked in, what does Google have to do ? Break in ?
The web should be open, and not only for Google’s success, but to have accessible, online content of everything..
Um, no… Google doesn’t need to break in, Google should pay for the access. If it’s not worth it to Google, then they don’t get in. Google is the great internet data suck hole. They make their money off your data that you give to them free of charge for using their “free” products… that’s your choice. Facebook is another company trying to make money from their own users. If Google were allowed to grab all that user data from Facebook pages, then Facebook’s ability to make money goes out the window.
The web should not be open as you state. Yes, the web should be open in the sense that if a website wants to share information with everyone else on the web, they should have that right. But on the reverse side, if a website has information that they do not wish to share, then they should have that choice as well.
There are many private companies that would rather be blocked from Google’s eyes, not because they have something to hide, but because they only want their clients to access the site after they’ve personally given them the URL to it. That’s the way they want to run their business, they should be allowed to do so.
I’m fairly confused by a main argument at the core of this — the belief that Google doesn’t WANT to integrate Facebook and Twitter items in its search results. I disagree with that, strongly.
I’m not sure one way or the other about “what Google wants.” Why do you feel strongly that they would like to do this?
Because it would increase their dominance further over web search, and therefore web search advertising, and that’s the thing that makes all the money for them. No matter what you think of Google’s business practices, “don’t be evil” and “make vast sums of money” line up when it comes to creating the best possible search results.
Hey, I’ve written as much here: http://battellemedia.com/archives/2009/06/google_v_facebook_what_we_learn_from_twitter.php This was 19 months ago…in mid 2009…
From it:
I think it’s a major strategic mistake to not offer this information to Google (and anyone else that wants to crawl it.) In fact, I’d argue that the right thing to do is to make just about everything possible available to Google to crawl, then sit back and watch while Google struggles with whether or not to “organize it and make it universally available.” A regular damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario, that….
Because they keep going back to the table?
Confused…which table?
Seems a bit ridiculous. Facebook doesn’t let third parties index their content. For now, they let the Google bot in on selected pages, but new search engines are robot.txt’d out. Facebook says new players should go through the API, but that one is severely rate limited.
Interesting, does Google say that the have double standards?
I mean – they respect Facebook terms and don’t index their content.But there are many pages blocking the robots and having let’s say similar terms in respect to content like Facebook does, but Google still index these.
So when it comes to Facebook, Google follows the rules, but if you are not big as Facebook is, it doesn’t.
Examples? I was under the impression that Google respected robots.txt
Does seem a pity Google doesn’t co-operate with Twitter more, but talk of anti-trust is definitely premature in light of how dominant Facebook is in social, not to mention their commercial relationship with Bing.
I agree, I’m not calling anti-trust yet.
Google is ruining everything for Google+ and I’m sure Google+ will never be like Facebook or get any active users more then Google fanboys.So Google please stop dreaming foe 500 million + users and focus on what you’re good at not you suck at.
I disagree that Google “sucks” at social although they certainly did up until Plus launched. Google Plus definitely has a niche and I think it will grow as Google gets to better understand the market and increases the capabilities of the platform to draw in greater crowds. The hangout technology is brilliant and if you are into photography you should check out the amazing content and tips being shared by the enormously social photography community. There is a lot of promise at Google Plus and I think 2012 will show rapid growth – nothing like Facebook but then that is a different animal altogether.
Guys I didn’t write this post to handicap Google+’s chances, but I rather like that you’re debating it.
Same has been said for facebook in the days of myspace.
What I don’t understand is why Google wouldn’t include what social insight they DO have from other networks. They obviously have some because Facebook business pages and Twitter pages are public and are included in search results. It would have shown good faith if they could have just included that data in basic terms and said… “hey, we want to do more but they have to work with us”… at least it would have held more water that way.
didn’t facebook go to bing?
After a fashion, yes.
ll
Google has every right to make this move if they feel it’s the “right one” but I not only question their timing but also their rationale for what the service actually delivers. From a timing perspective I think it’s overly aggressive to launch this without greater adoption of Google+ (in which I mean real usage of G+, not just sign-ups) and additional 3rd party sources of piped in information. I think it makes for a bad consumer experience which will ultimately do nothing to increase G+ usage and adoption. In regards to what it actually delivers I wasn’t looking for someone to return results that include what I’ve shared with others or get things from others that push other potentially more relevant items below the fold. I’d much rather have results returned based on relevance to my query with social graph signals overlaid to help me determine what results I can trust or look at more closely based on friends input or actions. In other words, don’t assume content is accurate or relevant just because someone I follow shared it with me or others in the same group. After all we’re all guilty of following some people for no better reason than to get a good discount on something we’re looking to purchase. And that’s hardly a sound foundation on which to define relevance.
I think time will tell – and also as I said in the piece, it depends on how they integrate it. I certainly don’t use Google+ enough for it to “matter” in my results, yet anyway. I do use Picasa quite a bit, and yeah, I’m not sure when I search for something if I want my photos incorporated.
We’ll see….good points.
FB + G = end of your privacy
Not, social networking? Everything ever posted by anyone on any social site is logged in it’s entirety.
All
this competition to offer personalized results may end up in privacy
loss.
Why does any of this suck for the web? The web just keeps getting better and better from where I’m standing.
Then I want to stand where you are.