Getting personal

Online search

Getting personal

Jan 11th 2012, 13:04 by M.G. | SAN FRANCISCO

 

 

 

FOR a company that is already the subject of intense scrutiny by antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic, Google seems surprisingly willing to provoke further debate about its dominance of the online-search business. on January 10th the internet giant announced a series of changes to the way its search engine operates that have incensed rivals. The general counsel of Twitter, a micro-blogging service, went so far as to claim in a tweet that search was being “warped” by Google, whose moves represented “a bad day for the internet”.

 

Google says its new initiative, dubbed “Search, plus Your World”, is designed to help users get even better results from its search engine. But its critics say it should really be called “Search, plus Google+” as the changes seem primarily designed to promote the firm’s fledgling social network. one tweak will mean that people who are signed in to Google will now be able to see information gleaned from their Google+ accounts in their private search results. Another means that profiles and Google+ pages of well-known people relevant to search topics will start to appear in results pages. Users may then be able to follow them online. These new social features will initially be available to people searching in English and logged into Google.

 

The firm’s desire to give search a more social flavour is a response to the rise of Facebook, which is encouraging people to find information via their network of online friends. Many people expect the giant social network, which has some 800m active users compared with Google+’s 65m, to push even further into Google’s search stronghold in future. By integrating Google+ more closely with its search function, Google is shoring up its defences against such an assault.

 

It is also trying to boost its revenue. Studies have repeatedly shown that Google is a great source of traffic to social networks, as people click through to them on seeing sparse, publicly available information from the networks flagged in Google’s search results. By beefing up the social data it provides in those results, the company is no doubt hoping it can keep some of that traffic—and the advertising revenue it generates—for itself.

 

But it is also inviting charges of abusing its clout. The firm’s critics, including Twitter, argue that it is using its dominance of online search to promote Google+ and to shut out rivals. Some even claim that Google is starting to behave in the same way Microsoft did in the 1990s, when it bundled its Internet Explorer web browser with its Windows operating system, which dominated the personal-computer market. Antitrust authorities ultimately cracked down on that practice.

 

Such claims come at a sensitive time for Google, which already faces investigation in Europe and America into allegations of unfairly favouring businesses it owns in its search results. In its defence, the company says it has made it easy for people to switch off the new features it is introducing if they do not wish to have a more personalised search experience. And it claims it is willing to include deeper data from other social networks in its search results, but says they are reluctant to share it.

 

There is something to this. Facebook, in particular, has been determined to keep most of the rich data it is gathering about its users out of competitors’ clutches. And although Twitter may squawk about Google’s behaviour, it, too, has been reluctant to share more information with a rival. Yet because Google dominates the search business in so many markets and seems determined to grow Google+ aggressively, its latest moves still merit close attention from regulators. The search firm’s bosses may not like that, but they should rest assured that it’s nothing personal.

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/01/online-search