Google Plus Integration in Search Puts Fresh Pressure on Facebook and Twitter
The announcement that Google Plus social content is now part of Google search was greeted with immediate complaints from Twitter and probably more than just a furrowed brow or two on the Facebook side of things.
All for good reason. Ever since Microsoft became a Facebook stakeholder and started nuancing BING search results with social media input directly from Facebook, Google has been on a mission to crack Social Search for good. Initially this means using data from its own properties (Gmail, Google Chat and Picasa) and cross-referencing it with what it could gleam from Twitter and the limited access it had to Facebook’s social graph.
When it launched its own social network, Google Plus, Facebook was caught on the backfoot and things have not really improved. The announcement of an increase in the character count of its status update for instance was a direct result of Google Plus success in getting heavy content input by its users and the introduction of Timeline which is rolling out soon is only intended to help it stave off a drop in popularity.
The announcement that Google Plus is now fully integrated in Google search can only add to the pressure Facebook is feeling. When it comes to search Google is so far ahead of the game in terms of capability, sensitivity and quality that catching up to it is never a realistic option. To be fair Facebook did not try. It, instead went another way, using its considerable ability to mine information from its membership base to serve socialised search results right on the Facebook page.
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