Much spleen has been vented over the launch of Google’s Search Plus Your World this week. As was inevitable, Google has merged its new Google+ social signals into its Web search, an act that the blogosphere waited until this week to be upset about. Before this launch, the integration of Google+ into search looked like the complete destruction of Google search, forcing social crap into everything. Instead, we got two modes: personalized and global. And now, unlike before, you can shut off social search entirely.
Search has a toggle switch now. One side recommends things based on your friends and connections, the other is a plain old search engine. Many bloggers still feel that it’s terrible, whether you can turn it off or not. Others find it useful, if you’re good about managing your contacts. One objection to the change is that it privileges Google content over objectively better results. Others find evidence that Google’s definition of “Your World” is bigger than Google+. What about you? Are you mad enough to dump Google?
It wasn’t clear before that Google would give users the option to turn off Google+ integration into search. Fortunately, it did, either temporarily or permanently. Some feel that opt-out isn’t good enough, since most people can’t be bothered or don’t understand. Danny Sullivan has highlighted lots of evidence that Search Plus Your World is really all about Google’s world, even for signed-out users, so maybe the opt-out doesn’t even help.
Is it that bad, though? Our Marshall Kirkpatrick points to a bunch of great use cases in which Search+ is quite helpful, provided you’ve managed your Google contacts well. But it’s clear that there are cases in which Google will point to itself ahead of a better result. Google will say that’s just the way it is in the early days, and the feature will get better in time. But for people who demand a more objective search engine, enough is enough.
So what will you do? Do you have Search Plus Your World yet? Did you opt out right away? Has it helped you, or is it annoying? For those who can’t stand it, will you switch to Bing? It’s not hard to switch the default search engine in most browsers. It could be an interesting experiment.
What about DuckDuckGo? This is the new super-geek favorite. It prides itself on being secure, clean and objective. It’s also customizable, and it launched a new redesign today to welcome disgruntled Google customers. But could it possibly be as comprehensive as Google? It hasn’t lived up to that in my personal experience.
Whatever you decide, please share it with us at ReadWriteWeb. You can post it in the comments below or tell us about it Google+ or Facebook. We’re still experimenting with the new features, and we want to hear how it’s going for you.