What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integr

What strikes me the most about this whole debacle is that people have complained for ages that Google doesn't "get" social. Its products have been poorly integrated and incongruent. Then, when Google says "Okay, we're going to integrate the balls off of everything, and provide a single consistent experience across all our products", people pitch a fit. That's because there are two entirely different classes of people that are do the bitching: 1) industry "analysts" and commentators claiming that Google doesn't "get" social and will one day lose out because of it 2) actual users of Google disliking the way that Google, in an effort to be "social" (whatever that is) is inserting unhelpful crap into the previously-pristine search results. Isn't it possible that this diversion into "social" will end up being a big mistake down the road if it fundamentally alters the main Search product? "Social search" seems to be something that prognosticators always claim is right around the corner and is going to change the way we do things, but I don't know a single person that really wants results from their social network in their search results. If we wanted to know what our friends thought about Search Topic X, we would just ask them.