

Introducing Google Social Search - txxxxd
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-google-social-search-i.html

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jsz0
This is going to be a fantastic tool for searching about incredibly mundane
stuff I don't really care about primarily from people I friended only because
I felt awkward declining their request. The possibilities are endless.

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netsp
Google's job is to help you search through the masses of uninteresting stuff
and get to the stuff you care about.

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NathanKP
It will be interesting to see how this turns out. It seems to me that it would
just make search results even worse in quality.

Clearly if it assigns extra weight to stuff written by your friends and
contacts then it will be harder to find stuff written by experts and
legitimate trustworthy sources. Not that friends can't be experts of
legitimate and trustworthy, but personally I'd rather see results from known
professionals rather than seeing results from someone who I just happened to
"friend".

Most social network friendships are completely meaningless exchanges so using
those connections in search results is also going to meaningless.

But I may be wrong. Does anyone else have a differing opinion?

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idm
I definitely put extra weight on my friends' opinions, if only because I can
interrogate them about what they've said.

If I want more information, I know how to directly contact them, and I also
feel like I'm building context for the next time we interact. Since we're
already connected, I think there is less of a barrier for them to reply to me.

Maybe this has to do with the size of my network (it's comparatively small)
but I have a fairly rich shared history with the majority of people I'm
connected to, so I can see how this feature will be really compelling.

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chanux
This is one of the best things that can be done with Social Data.

I remember the day Google got access to Twitter data.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=896297>

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dirtyfratboy
After Sergey and Larry step down, we're all screwed. Google's seemingly
philanthropic offering of free goodies will be exploited by the next-gen
CEO's. They have us by the balls, in terms of information. What the hell do we
do now?

And no, moving to Canada is not an option.

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HistoryInAction
Google's going after facebook? Guess it's also them trying to outflank Bing
with their announcement of immediate implementation of returning Twitter
searches... interesting move

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teej
Remember OpenSocial? Google has been going after Facebook for quite a while.

