14 DAY TRIAL // Google is coming under continuing fire for the Search Plus Your World set of features that integrate Google+ into Google search, while leaving out other social networks. Google has been rightfully criticized about its move, though it has had some counter points.
But its arguments didn't hold water, as perfectly demonstrated by a new site and a bookmarklet created by some of Google's rivals, in the social networking world, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others.
Most of the work has been done by Facebook's Director of Product Blake Ross, of Mozilla Firefox fame.
The site, dubbed "Focus on the user," enables users to install (save) a bookmarklet in their browsers and use it to access a customized Google search engine.
The customized page doesn't revert the Search Plus features, rather, it does what Google should have done in the first place, it integrates other social services, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on, with the new social search features.
The "Don't be evil" bookmarklet does three main things, it alters the "People & Pages" widget to include more than just Google+ links, it auto-completes profile pages to more than just Google+ in the search suggestions and alters sitelinks to, again, include more than just Google+ pages.
The result is a 'Search Plus Your World'-enabled Google done right, albeit with a few caveats. Snippets, suggestions and page links now point to the most popular profile regardless of its origin, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and so on.
The best part is that the ranking is determined using Google's own search tools, the most popular profile is picked by Google algorithms and not the ones that built the bookmarklet.
One caveat is that suggestions in the People & Pages section have to come from Google+, a profile is suggested only if it is available on the Google social network. The bookmarklet then changes the links to whatever is the most popular profile, but the results are still only limited to people who have a Google+ page or profile.
All in all, the bookmarklet works and search results are richer, to some degree. It also succeeded in its goal, that of proving that, using only public data, available to Google already, Google could have built a better social search experience.
However, one big part of Search Plus Your World are the personal search results, those shared by you and your friends, which are not public on the web. No bookmarklet is going to be able to add Facebook or Twitter results.
That said, while the tool proves some hypocrisy on the part of Google, it does come from Facebook and Twitter, two hardly uninterested parties which don't really have a track record of openness themselves, particularly Facebook.