Tag Archives: Google

Google “Search Plus Your World” – Opportunistic or Monopolistic?

Featured

I smell a lawsuit or at the very least a lot of hullabaloo. Google announced the next step towards Social Search with “Search, plus your world” . Whereby it will personalize Google search results by integrating social data from Google+. According to Google’s official blog post, here is a brief description of the service:

“We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features:

  1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
  2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
  3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community. Continue reading →

Why is the Indian government afraid of the Internet?

25 December 2011

Leave a comment

There was a time when businesses hated social media. They thought it was a waste of effort, a resource drain, and lacked accountability and upside. While, many businesses are still late to the party and others are just plan using them incorrectly, several brands/companies have leveraged social media to be a useful tool to generate brand awareness, leads and most importantly activating brand enthusiasts.

So the recent spate of governments, particularly democratic governments, wanting to curb the power of the Internet has perturbed me. Why are democracies infringing upon its citizens free speech? Particularly allowing them to make their own decisions.

Most recently one of the world’s largest democracies, India, has begun asking websites to screen content and even take down content that it deems inappropriate. Indian Telecommunications Minister, Kapil Sibal, meet with Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in a bid to get them to see how some of the content on their sites – social networks and otherwise – was harming the delicate sensibilities of the Indian people. Government officials were particularly upset about Web pages that are insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and major religious figures. Mr Sibal over the past three months has asked these firms to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the Internet. Continue reading →