Opinion: Tagging in Google Co-Op? Trend graphs for search terms? Google users might as well have giant advertising targets painted on their backs.In case you missed it, Google posted four (well, three really ... but we'll get to that) new features yesterday under the heading "yes, we are still all about search."
Considering their forays into video, word processing and calendaring lately, maybe they thought we needed a little reminder.
Perhaps, but what they have unleashed is pretty darn interesting, especially when taken in the context of continuing to differentiate Google from Yahoo and Microsoft, two competitors that are in the process of making their ad offerings more Google-like. So sure, it's about search, but it's also about better search.
Probably the most interesting thing about the new features is that they aren't about better algorithms, but about letting humans into the mix.
Google Co-Op adds "tagging" to search, allowing users to contribute to relevance by signing up as a member and tagging sites based on various topic areas.
Google Desktop 4 (or see our review here) improves on the previous Google Desktop experience by adding MacOS X-like "gadgets" that can provide info while hanging out on your desktop, Google Notebook (not released yet, though promised next week) that'll add clipboard-like actions and search saving, and Google Trends, an improvement on Google Zeitgeist.
As far as user-experience is concerned, the new Desktop and Notebook functions ought to prove pretty interesting. The Notebook function is long overdue and finally adds some functionality that addresses the way people really search: as "berry pickers," foraging around for different bits of information on topics rather than in a more linear search paradigm.
The Desktop Gadgets … well, they're pretty cool in their own way, though they really don't add much more than a "gee whiz" veneer to functionality that already exists in plenty of different forms.
By far the most exciting addition to the Google pantheon is Co-Op. Riding the rising tide of social networking apps and the popularity of using "tagging" to help direct searches, Co-Op has the potential to revolutionize the way that many of us use Google by bringing a human collaborative editorial element to search.
As any of us who use Digg, Flickr, or del.icio.us have discovered, having other humans add their collective two cents to content by classifying it using tags greatly improves search relevance.
Google's certainly not the first to do this—Eurekster has been doing it for a while using the concept of "Swickis" or "search wikis"—but this is Google, and people are going to notice and use the new functions.
With the user base Google owns, the results should prove to be pretty interesting in short order.
But why do this? Why spend the time, effort and money to launch these new products? One answer is, of course, that money's not exactly an object at Google these days. Another answer is that Google has to keep adding new features if they're going to stay ahead in the search wars.
But I'm betting the real answer is that they're prepared to fight against Yahoo's advertising engine and Microsoft's revamped adCenter.
These new features (and a lot of others they've pushed out over the past year) have the potential to add a hell of a lot to their advertising offering.
How? Take Google Co-Op. So you have users tagging content. And those users are engaged in a community where they discuss their interests. As far as advertisers are concerned, those folks might as well have giant targets painted on their backs.
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Advertisers don't have to guess what their interests might be or infer them from their searches. They're self selecting and potentially giving up loads of attitudinal and interest data.
While Google's privacy policy states pretty clearly that they're not going to give out personal information, the kind of non-personally-identifiable information they're going to be able to gather on what gadgets you download, how you tag content, what kind of searches you do and what kinds of information you collect in your Notebook account is still pretty darn valuable for advertisers.
Play around with the improved graphing and features of the new Trends function while thinking like an advertiser trying to time and place ads and you'll begin to see how even macro-trends culled from non-private information could be very, very valuable.
Sure, some folks have mentioned that they're a bit uneasy with the data Google collects, but the popularity of Gmail and Calendar both show that most people don't care all that much as long as nothing personal gets out there.
Are these new products attempts to head off Yahoo and Microsoft? They certainly are. You don't have to squint too far into the future to see a picture emerge.
