And let's not forget that Twitter and FB both have search features (actually I'm not sure about FB, I've never been on it, but it has to, right?), and furthermore, they're both in their ways trying to obviate search by providing what people want in other ways. That's the premise of FB as a Google killer right? That social is undermining search as the way people get information on the internet?
Setting aside how absurd I find that notion to be, it seems to me that the whole G+ project is a response to that threat, and it's a response that says "I can duplicate your functionality a lot easier than you can duplicate mine, and it adds a lot more value to my major service to duplicate your functionality, than it adds to your major service to duplicate mine."
It also seems like a play to get access to Twitter and FB data. Google uses free data on the open web. If you don't allow them to index your data for free, why would you expect them to include them in their search results?
As a user, I want Twitter and FB to give Google all of their data, and I want Google to run all of that data through their algorithms and give me the results that are the best, regardless of what service it's on. From where I sit, it doesn't seem like Google is the player that's in the way of that happening.
> If you don't allow them to index your data for free,
> why would you expect them to include them in their search
> results?
This tool demonstrates that Google is already accessing and indexing the data it says it needs to improve its search results. This isn't rhetoric; it's code.
> This tool demonstrates that Google is already accessing and indexing the data it says it needs to improve its search results. This isn't rhetoric; it's code.
It doesn't really demonstrate that. It demonstrates that Google can show G+ pages related to a topic, and that it can show high-ranked social pages linked to the owners of those G+ pages. But it doesn't show that on a broad, scalable basis Google can dependably link from a topic to a highly relevant 3rd-party social page. Demonstrating it on a couple of easy, celebrity-focused queries isn't proof of anything.
I've noticed Facebook even asks you to login if you're logged out of Facebook and you're reading on a Facebook page. Why should Google have to deal with that when even Facebook themselves don't want their own data to be very public?
Blake why are you guys completely kicking out the legitimate G+ profile links from the search results using the bookmarklet? I thought you were against search result manipulations. I search for people like Guy Kawasaki or Trey Ratcliff who are very active in G+ and yet their profiles are not listed on the first page of the results if I use your bookmarklet.
Setting aside how absurd I find that notion to be, it seems to me that the whole G+ project is a response to that threat, and it's a response that says "I can duplicate your functionality a lot easier than you can duplicate mine, and it adds a lot more value to my major service to duplicate your functionality, than it adds to your major service to duplicate mine."
It also seems like a play to get access to Twitter and FB data. Google uses free data on the open web. If you don't allow them to index your data for free, why would you expect them to include them in their search results?
As a user, I want Twitter and FB to give Google all of their data, and I want Google to run all of that data through their algorithms and give me the results that are the best, regardless of what service it's on. From where I sit, it doesn't seem like Google is the player that's in the way of that happening.