With Google Plus being gradually shut down, following revelations of a security issue and its lack of popularity, it seems that Google now has plans to add a social element to search. Changes to the Google mobile app indicate the company’s special media aspirations haven’t faded – they have shifted.
[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/10/google-plus-data-leak/” thumb=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2011/10/GooglePlus-410×231.jpg” title=”Google Plus Is Officially Dead Following Huge Data Leak” excerpt=”Google has announced the closure of its ailing social media network Google+ in response to a data leak that exposed up to 500,000 users. If you were one of the few people still using the platform – or created an account and forgot about it – here’s what you need to know.”]
An app teardown by 9to5Google has revealed that the ability to leave comments against results in Google Search is being developed. They discovered this in Google app 8.55 on Android, saying a “Your contributions” has been in development for some time but that the URL for the feature is active with a simple form for adding Reviews and Comments.
There’s also an offical support page for leaving comments on Google Search.
It’s an interesting move. When Google Search first appeared in 1997, it’s most obvious advantage over the competition go the day (Alta Vista and Yahoo! Were the main players then) was speed. Google’s search results appeared in a fraction of the time of the other engines of the day. Adding more information to results, like comments, might not slow things down from a delvers perspective but it could add extra information to the results that add time to how long we have to interpret them.
That would not be a good thing.
Google and Facebook are locked in a battle for control of our eyeballs. Facebook has created something Microsoft and others tried, unsuccessfully, to create in the 1990s – a private version of the web that they control. And Google has moved from search to total revolutionising how we fond information and how advertising works.
But whether Google can successfully bring social to search remains to be seen. I sceptical as to the value of this move.
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