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Why Google is ditching search

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This post was also published on CNET and VentureBeat. There has been a huge maelstrom about Google integrating Google+ into its search links . And it all misses the point. Twitter and others are complaining that Google is throwing its massive 65% plus market share weight around and quashing smaller competitors. The reason Twitter and others are so threatened is that the pattern of shared links within Google+ provides a decent enough indicator as to what links are interesting. What's important is what's trending, and algorithms can get a sense of that with just a subset of everything that's getting shared on the Web. The most interesting aspect of Google's move, however, is its tacit acknowledgement that its stalwart search links are largely irrelevant and might as well be replaced with social results. Google search results are essentially gamed results produced by search optimizers. In other words, the search results that we supposedly value so highly are themselve