News

In order to use social search, users need to be logged into a Google profile.   Google will then suggest connections to those listed as friends on users’   publicly available social network profile information and by crawling their   Gmail contacts, (if they have a Gmail account).

Once these details have been tracked for the first time, search results from   social networks will always appear at the bottom of the page with a note of   which network the information has been pulled from.

The expansion of the service comes on heels of Facebook having admitted hiring a PR company to spread smear stories about Google’s use of   people’s private information to improve its service. Facebook is understood   to have been annoyed about Google being able to use its data without   permission to power services like its social search.

Yohann Coppel, a Google software engineer, wrote on the company blog:   “In 2009 we first introduced Social Search on google.com as an experimental   feature designed to help you find more relevant information from your   friends and the people you care about. Since then we’ve been making steady   improvements to connect you with more people and more relevant web results.   Today, we’re bringing Social Search to more users around the globe.