Not Stopping Believing

It’s close. Google might be finally violating their sweet “don’t be evil” mantra by creeping deep into our online social lives. The “Social Search” that Google has been yammering on about for months is almost here. We’ve all been seeing some recent progress toward Social Search on our Google results pages, with Tweets from across the Twittersphere showing up toward the top of many of our search results.

Google will soon be making search much more personal. The new and improved Google will not just crawl the internet for information; it will also (with permission) comb through posts made by you and your friends on Twitter, Facebook, and any blogs you subscribe to, and serve them up to you as search results.

The way Google works currently is much more generic. Through various types of proprietary analytical magic, Google determines what the whole of the online world believes is the most relevant search result for, say, “Twilight tickets.” In a nutshell, it does this by taking a lighting-fast poll across the Internet to see how many people agree that a given link for Twilight tickets is credible, if it is in fact a link to what it says it is. The more credible the link, the higher it shows up in the Google rankings. In theory, anyway.

The new system takes the Google credibility magic and applies it to your social networks. In the near future, “credible” posts and content from your friends and trusted networks will now be featured in your Google results. Friends in your digital social circle will be judged by Google as credible based on factors like how many friends they have and how many of their friends liked what they had to say about a particular piece of information.

The downside? Google gets to reach into your personal business. We all voluntarily decide to live in a 1984-esque totalitarian state. Hmmm.

The bright side? Internet searches become more relevant and meaningful to you. Based on looking at me and my friends, Google could realize that I’m a 43-year-old with interests in astronomy. Turns out I’m actually looking for tickets to the Twilight Festival in Boston, an annual nighttime stargazing event, not for tickets to a vapid teenage supernatural drama. Google becomes more accurate because it knows me.

Google is betting you will find the benefits outweigh the risks. They’re also betting you’re too lazy to stop them. And so far they’re right: And based on the remarkable amount of privacy we all have willingly or unknowingly surrendered on Facebook, their odds are looking good.