Interesting article on the Google & Facebook decision not to co-operate on blending search with social network data.
John Battelle gives plenty of background for this and Venture Beat took up the issue of reduced trust, but what I find interesting are implications for the practice of law.
Just as the average lawyer is finally getting the hang of using search engines on-line, the Google + move slams the door shut on our romance with objective search. Now, what we get is not what the web has to offer, but what Google thinks we might like based on our online social graph. If search is a box of chocolates, Google + is pulling out all the cashew clusters.
The practicing attorney who gets bombarded with irrelevant social network and social media dross when trying to find legally relevant information will look elsewhere. Twitter streams were particularly interesting, but they’re gone too. In short, a lot of what made Google a reliable partner for the working lawyer has been flushed in an attempt to compete with Facebook.
Now, with all this Google + stuff, instead of getting a raft of objective search results, attorneys are going to have to work even harder to get around the everyday and ordinary. One technique, of course, is to use Google’s advanced search page. [ here's the link since it suddenly became VERY hard to find ]
Worse, if they search using Google + (and why wouldn’t you?!) the top results will hardly be a considered keyword tour of Google’s web database. Instead, they’ll end up with stuff someone they know already found because Google + thought that would be a great idea. [snark] Sorta like document review [/snark].
Seriously, though: let’s tease this out and imagine that you’ve Google-circled a bunch of friends at an opposing firm. How convenient it would be were they to bookmark sites that leave a telltale trail to a client that they’re cultivating.
“Susan ran that very same search last week!” proclaims Google +, “Here look: she even bookmarked a bit of her results, which means she thought it was REALLY important!”…With Google +, now you can get potentially competitive information just by being friendly.
Of course, had Facebook permitted use of its “Firehose,” you’d get even more free information. So, I suppose it’s a good thing that only Facebook will mine your profile for sale-worthy data.
Even from the cheap seats, it’s pretty clear that bad search leads to bad law.
Surely, there’s a better way to combine who you know with what they know to create value-added knowledge.