This Is The Place Where My Mind Is Free

January 12th, 2012 at 9:44PM

For more than a decade, Google search wasn’t “social” in any way. When I searched for a new car or a European hotel or the best way to plunge a toilet, Google would give me results that reflected the collected view of all Web users. That worked really well! Not once during those years did I get to a Google results page and lament that I couldn’t see my friends’ ideas about the car I should buy or the hotel I ought to book. While my friends are thoughtful and knowledgeable people, their views on the tens of thousands of large and small inquiries that I bring to Google every year are almost always irrelevant. When I’ve got a clogged toilet, I want advice from an expert—a plumber, preferably, but I’ll even take the stranger who wrote this eHow post. What I don’t want to know is which link my boss consulted when his toilet was clogged. —

Google social search: The tech giant’s disastrous decision to muck up its search results (via ayjay)

I’m a big google / android fanboy but this decision was just ridiculous. The internet is already over-saturated with people’s opinions and we already deal with facebook opinions about everything and anything within our social circles. I loved the idea of Google+ but because it didn’t catch fire does not mean Google has to integrate everything with one’s online social network. Googling something and Facebooking something should not become synonymous. Innovation is nice but practicality trumps all.

(via azspot)