Senin, 16 Januari 2012
By Paul Hartsock, TechNewsWorld
01/14/12 5:00 AM PT
01/14/12 5:00 AM PT
Google's overhauled its search engine yet again, this time piping in information from Google+. But critics were quick to knock Search Plus Your World for what they see as privacy risks, not to mention preferential treatment for Google's own properties over competitors. Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt argues over the meaning of "fragmented," Intel turns to mobile, and Razer warms up a gaming tablet.
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Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has tuned up its search engine once again, but this time instead of shaving a couple of precious microseconds off its response time, it's decided to adjust some back-end systems in a way that changes the kinds of results people get, depending on who they are.
Google users who are signed onto a Google account -- that is, a Gmail account, a Google+ profile, etc. -- will see search results culled not only from the Web at large, but also from information contained in their personal Google profiles, as well as info their friends on sites like Google+ have decided to make public. So for example, if you do a search for "Disneyland," you'll see Disneyland's own site, as usual, but you might also see photos of Disneyland that your friend posted and tagged on Google+ a few weeks ago.
The service is called "Search Plus Your World," and it's rolling out to users over the next several days. If it sounds like it's going to screw up the way you use Google and turn what once was a powerful, universal Web search tool into an engine that mostly delivers irrelevant chitchat from your friends as top-shelf results, you're not alone. Some critics call this a big step backward for Google. If you don't want any part of it, you can opt out -- but doing that will be up to you.
That's not the only thing critics aren't happy about. As is usually the case when a search engine starts dipping into data contained on social networks, privacy advocates are giving the new system a very stern look. It's not as though people can use Search Plus Your World to easily peek in at your innermost Google+ secrets. The only information people can get is stuff you've already agreed to share with them. But it does open up a new way for people to find out information about each other, and the fact that Google's just going ahead and implementing it has triggered bad memories of its Buzz debacle in 2010.
In fact, user privacy is one topic that EPIC -- the Electronic Privacy Information Center -- has focused on in its message to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission regarding Search Plus Your World. The other is the possible abuse of Google's position in the market.
Although Google still draws up information from competing social networks like Twitter and Facebook, with Search Plus Your World, Google's own social network properties are given a very clear advantage in search rankings. Google+ stuff comes up way ahead of similar relevant info from other companies.
That kind of allegation plays very nicely with a similar controversy in which Google's already involved. Owners of everything from restaurant review sites to city mapping sites have claimed that Google gives its own properties unfair preferential treatment in search results -- for example, putting Google Maps or Zagat at the top of search results for "maps" or "restaurant reviews," respectively.
Back on the social networking side, Twitter seems especially concerned that its information will get shoved out of Google's top results once Your World takes effect. In reply to that, though, Google reminded it that Twitter actually decided to discontinue its Realtime Search deal last summer, in which Google paid to have Twitter hand-feed it information.
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