“Search Plus Your World” is Google’s latest play to promote Google+. Basically your personal search results will now be mashed up with topical references from your Google+ stream (unless you opt-out)
As usual “personalisation” for improved results is the Google mantra and rationale behind the changes. However, on the other end of the continuum Google seems to be moving away from customisation to a homogenisation when it comes to the actual service they offer. The new service will attempt to satisfy all your search, social and bookmarking needs in one grand (take-over-the-world) platform.
Whilst on paper they might be moving in the right direction with customising results, the reality of the maturing webscape is that services are also becoming customised. For social – go to Facebook, they do it best. For realtime micro-blogging go to Twitter. For bookmarking use something like Evernote. Web services that stick to their knitting and avoid the Jack-of-all-trades trap will always do it best.
The market for a good plain Vanilla search engine will never disappear. But the big G seems to be undertaking a “make or break” bet on Google+. They’re playing a dangerous game and better be careful. There are already commentators like Gizmodo who see this latest move as a Google break, not a Google make.