Google 'Search Plus' was inevitable, so stop whinging
Google made a pretty big change to their search product this week - meaning that people and pages from Google+ now appear alongside your search results. Similar results from Twitter and Facebook do not.
Predictably this has caused a stink, predominantly from Twitter, who allege that the changes will ‘make it harder for people to find information’. [1. http://parislemon.com/post/15633422401/twitter-responds-to-antitrust]
Whilst this has undoubtedly changed the playing field for social marketing and search marketing quite significantly [2. For a start, brands will really seriously need to think about getting their presence sorted on Google+. I expect to see some quite big advertising products from Google over the next few months helping brands target fans of their pages across the whole of their ad network.], I think we need to remember something:
Google (and Twitter and Facebook) are completely free for end users.
As tools for communication and research they are almost priceless, yet it doesn’t cost any of us a penny to use them.
Just like Twitter [3. See my post on how Twitter is now an advertising business.] and Facebook, Google is an advertising business.
To sell more ads they need to know as much about you as possible, and have as much traffic as possible.
Putting Google+ next to normal searches means brands can’t ignore that presence. They will be forced to actively used it, and will eventually become Google’s customers.
If we want to be able to use such powerful tools for free but have other people paying for them, we shouldn’t be surprised when the companies that run them aggressively protect their business.
