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….
If Google put a Facebook link on every one of it’s results, Facebook’s worth would skyrocket. Google would solidify them as the social giant. Any stragglers would eventually have to jump on the Facebook band wagon. Creating there own service, just like they created Chrome to compete with Firefox is not to “stay in their world” it’s to make sure that all the other players in the market don’t do anything drastic. Having a Google alternative for every application that we use on the internet is a “safe bet” for Google. Especially since they can afford to give always everything for free. They will just wait and when one of their opponents pulls a myspace, Google will just lean right on into the fast lane.
My philosophy on this is a bit different. I think all services should share data and make it easily transportable by their customers. Then they compete on who adds the most value to that data.
Perhaps I’m on the opposite side of the #nymwars from the rest of the commenters here, as well as the author. Facebook’s and Google+’s identity policies have kept me from ever joining the former, and induced me to quit the latter three weeks into its beta phase, before they had the chance to ban me for being “fake” and lock me out of my blog, and Picasa. Thus, I fail to see how Google’s inability to crawl Facebook and Twitter is a bad thing, and how adding the noise of G+ friends’ links to the signal of genuine search results is a good thing.
OK, I’ll grant there’s a modicum of convenience to a “one-stop-shopping” site for search — assuming you want all the foam and froth of social engagement while you’re trying to find facts and/or informed opinion. But, as we learned when gas stations became “convenience stores”, the prices rise — unfortunately, the price paid for the kind of convenience being discussed here is paid in a reduction in privacy and personal control over one’s online presence and reputation.
Indeed, the Internet thus turning from of a place of obscured identity and no laws (=real freedom of speech without fear) into a place of easily traceable one with corporate TIC and unexplained decisions instead of law.
Wish social would be separated from the rest of it be an iron curtain.
I think all options will be available. IE you can always use Path for “social” and its seems to be getting traction. This battle has to do with a lot more than just social, I’d warrant.
I’m completely confused by the word ‘extol’, could someone please explain it to me? After reading this I’d rather not Google it.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/extol
Glorify, exalt, celebrate
For those who don’t know, this social media phase was spun together under the guise of an innovative, fairly-new way to help usher in Web 3.0
With nearly every American consumer offering basic details about themselves, posting personal information, friends, phone numbers, etc., the various social media databases in existence are a gold mine of consumer information, as well as social statistics and preference. Twitter takes this a step further by encouraging excessive, short posts of information: what’s happening around you, where you’re headed, and most often, how you’re feeling.
Government officials, marketing tycoons, and sometimes, strangers, can achieve a state of partial omnipotence over your lives, social network users.