Earlier this month, Google launched “Search Plus Your World”. We’ll refer to it as “SPYW” to save time. The set of personalization features essentially equates to Google injecting a whole lot of Google+ into Google search results. This has been met with widespread criticism that continues two weeks later. According to a lot of the chatter going on, Google has lost the respect of a lot of users, and even some of its alumni.

The real question is: has SPYW made Google’s results better or worse? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Competitors like Twtitter and Facebook have been pretty vocal about the changes. Twitter publicly complained as soon as the features launched, claiming they’re bad for the Internet. Various Facebook staff complained about the features in status updates

This week, we learned that one Facebook staffer took things a great deal further by creating a bookmarklet for web browsers that eliminate the features, and “Focus on the user,” as they put it.

One of the main things it does is add content from other places like Twitter , Facebook, YouTube, etc. to the “People and Places” section that appears for some queries. Google in its current state only shows Google+ pages and profiles here. This is why some find the whole thing anticompetitive, and even a sacrifice of relevancy, as Twitter profiles and Facebook pages will often be much more heavily followed and/or updated.

http://www.webpronews.com/are-googles-results-better-or-worse-with-google-integration-2012-01