Saturday, January 11, 2014

Google Hummingbird and Other Stuff

As a follow-up to my last post about Google Hummingbird, it's becoming more clear what Google is really trying to do with all of their apps and services.  They want Google+ to be king over Facebook and other social sites. Problem is, the adoption just isn't there. So, they integrate Google+ will other stuff they own, like YouTube. The search results you see when you "Google" something are based on where you live, where you have been on the web, your activity on Google+ and all kinds of behavior detectors.

Here's an article that I totally agree with:

Sorry, Google+, We Still Won't Come to Your Party.

But, here's the problem. People don't like this level of privacy invasion. I know I don't.

So, the big goal for Google is to own it all by owning all the knowledge about you and your activities. This is attractive for businesses, because this level of information is normally very expensive, but anyone with a website can get it free with Google Analytics.

All I know is that the more I see of this direction, the less I like.

Here's an interesting test. Try the same search terms in Google, Bing and Yahoo and notice how the Google-affiliated sites seems to float higher. That's cool if you are in the "Google party", but what if you are just looking for helpful information?

More to come...

No comments: