Not sure how I feel about this new function coming from Google. We’ll soon be able to see search results called “social search”, which will give you status updates, flickr feeds, and facebook profiles for the things that you search for. Do you really want your Tweet’s appearing on this? Making it even easier to find you. I can certainly see negative implications regarding employment background checks and the like. Another reason why in this day and age, if you don’t want something to be traced back to you online, don’t post it anywhere!!
Here’s the story from Mashable:
Google’s Vice-President of Search Marissa Mayer has just made a surprise announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo: a new Google Labs feature called Social Search. They just gave a quick demo of the new feature. While the details are still sparse, here is what we currently know (and we’re still updating, so check back for more information): – The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr() photos or their status updates.
It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results. – These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results. – They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data. – It will launch in Google Labs in the next few weeks.
[...] speculated on what this “social search” would entail, and some expressed concerns over privacy and [...]